


Red, Red, Room

by tenuous



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abduction, Age Difference, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Captivity, Class Issues, Dark Romance, Darkfic, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dubious Consent, Graphic Violence, M/M, Major Character Injury, Medical Procedures, Red Room, Stockholm Syndrome, Torture, Whump, dubcon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:06:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23901934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenuous/pseuds/tenuous
Summary: Living on the streets, Dylan is used being seen as an easy target. He spends his days asking strangers for money with his cardboard sign (HOMELESS, PLEASE HELP) and daydreaming about his mysterious regular named Morgan who drives a fancy car and stoically passes him money without a word.When Dylan's abducted by a sinister organization that can only want to hurt him, he's shocked to find Morgan is involved—working as a makeshift doctor for the operation.Dylan barely knows Morgan, has barely spoken to him past muttered gratitude after the wealthy man hands him money out of his car window. But now this almost-stranger may be the only chance Dylan has for making it out of this alive.
Relationships: Dylan (OC)/Morgan (OC)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is a WIP so read at your own risk. Not as thoroughly edited in this stage as it will be upon completion lol. 
> 
> **Specific Content Warnings:**  
Graphic gore/torture.  
Graphic body horror  
Medical gore  
Amputation  
Dubcon (by nature of captive/captor relationship)  
Romance between captive/captor  
Mentioned past child abuse  
Implied past off-screen noncon not involving main pairing  
Sexual harassment (not between main pairing)
> 
> **DISCLAIMER: This is an "Explicit" rated work of fiction that should only be read by adults who feel confident that they will not be negatively influenced or harmed by fictional content. It is NOT intended for educational purposes.**

Dylan grows warier as the sun sinks low in the sky, saturating the already dull concrete world of traffic and shopping centers around him. Passengers and drivers alike don’t look at him, their gazes pointedly averted. That’s how this works, as if dictated by unspoken social law: stare ahead, pretend not to notice the young man standing on the corner with his crumpled cardboard sign. 

It’s as if any acknowledgement of Dylan's existence—a smile, a nod, a hello—will prompt him to reach for their wallets.

So he’s ignored. Existence ignored, humanity ignored. 

This part never changes. Or gets any easier.

Dylan’s jaw stays clenched the entire time he’s on the corner asking for money. That’s okay, he asks with his sign, not his voice. Using his voice would be more intimate, a more tangible rejection.

It’s dark enough now that cars turn on their headlights, the beams of too-bright light splashing against his face as the drivers pretend not to notice him. The stoplight turns red and they’re forced to stop next to him, they look out the opposite window or fiddle with the radio.

The other day he found a good, clean chunk of cardboard in the dumpster nearby the coffee shop from a broken down box. One of the older women, Martha, who also lives on the streets in this area had lifted a pack of thick black markers from the shopping center which the cars are spilling out of now. She’d passed the markers out to the entire group that sleeps in a thicket of bushes next to the railroad tracks.

The aren’t a makeshift family. They fend for themselves. But the occasional sharing of supplies and conversation builds enough trust to prevent theft amongst themselves.

The words on his sign are thick, ink shining with the newness of the marker. Dylan’s sure the people in the cars can read the words in the spill of their headlights.

HOMELESS.  
PLEASE HELP.  
GOD BLESS.

Dylan doesn’t believe in God. But those who have been living on the street much longer than him advise that writing that part helps. He’d refused at first, balked at the disingenuousness. A week’s worth of hunger pangs is all it took for him to give in. The dollars and change came more often after that. God bless.

The words help people remember his humanity, he thinks. The humanity of those who sleep in underpasses and park benches. Whose few sets of clothes are valued more for their protection against the elements than how they look, or how often they’re cleaned. 

Dylan can’t often afford to spill a handful of bottled water into his hands to scrub off the dirt and sweat streaking his face. He can’t afford the illusion of cleanliness. No temporary comfort here. The water needs to go to fighting the dehydration that comes with standing all day in a concrete wasteland under the blazing sun.

HOMELESS.  
PLEASE HELP.  
GOD BLESS.

Dylan says he doesn’t believe in God, but he might, occasionally, when a generous stranger passes him a freshly brewed iced coffee out of their car window. He finds traces of what people call God in the condensation on the cup, the beads cooling his skin when he presses it to his face. The taste is familiar and domestic. Expensive. Not something he would waste the money he collects at the intersection on, even though the comfort is tempting.

Today, Dylan grows apprehensive as the street lights switch on, projecting their yellow glow in swaths of periodic spotlight. The new kid in their area, Trevor, has been handling his own corner for a few weeks now. The kid’s only sixteen, only kicked out of his parent’s house a month ago—and only living on the streets for less than two weeks. Dylan remembers what it’s like being that young and vulnerable. The clarity of sudden freedom that comes bittersweet with the utter terror of isolation. The instability of a kite having its strings cut in a strong wind. The stressful support of family, society, gone in an instant.

As if that support was ever really stable to begin with.

It wasn’t, not for Dylan.

It gets even harder at night, the uncertainty, the knowledge of just how easy it is to get pulled into a stranger’s car in the dark. Even easier and more common is being harassed by groups of privileged kids from the suburbs with nothing better to do than film their cruelty played out upon the vulnerable. And it’s true that they are vulnerable when the world at large considers them the perfect victims.

Alone. No significant money, no agency. Little credibility with the police. Perpetrators think that no one would care if someone living on the streets went missing. And that makes them vulnerable, whether or not it’s true that no one would notice their absence or care about their distress.

For Dylan it’s true.

Some of the others swear by collecting money into the night, swear that people are willing to give more the later it is. It’s too dangerous for Dylan when he gets enough catcalls during the day from men and women.

But his best regular always comes just after sunset, if he comes at all. So Dylan would still be here a little longer than he should, even if he wasn’t also waiting for Trevor to show up. 

It’s random when his regular in the sleek black electric car drives by, but it’s always after dark. He usually shows up a few times a week, pulling through the coffee shop’s drive-thru despite the late hour, exiting at the light where Dylan collects money.

Tonight is no exception.

Dylan spots his car instantly, the only one of its type in this area. He eyes it as it slows to a stop beside him.

The stoplight isn’t red. Most people only give money when they’re stuck at the red light. This man stops no matter what, often pissing off the traffic he forces to veer around him.

This time, there are no other cars. Just this man. Just Dylan. Still no sign of Trevor. 

Dylan walks up to the passenger side window, it rolls down on cue.

The man in the driver’s seat is a middle-aged asian man, dark hair swept back and streaked with just enough gray at the temples to make Dylan question whether or not he has it dyed prematurely gray in a salon. He’s always dressed in pristine professional clothing. His expression perpetually tired and severe.

Dylan would be lying if he said he wasn’t attracted to this man and his serious demeanor. It’s the fact that he’s utterly uninterested in Dylan that makes Dylan trust him enough to feel the odd pull of attraction in his belly. This man absolutely refuses to give Dylan more than a glance. Dylan hates himself for the way his stomach flutters hotly at the sight of his car alone. It isn’t the man’s income visible in his tailored clothes and fancy car, or the promise of stability that comes with those things. It’s… something else Dylan can’t place. An interest he doesn’t have the romantic or sexual experience to quantify. 

It’s probably a bad thing that a complete lack of interest piques Dylan’s. Probably something a psychiatrist would link to the emotional abuse he endured growing up. It’s pathetic and he knows it. It feels like this man knows it too.

The man’s disinterested glance flicks across Dylan as he reaches into the breast pocket of his suit jacket and extracts a dull green bill. He holds the money out with a bent elbow—making no attempt to stretch his arm out to pass the money to Dylan at the passenger window. Every single time. He does this every single fucking time. 

Dylan’s forced to duck into the open window, leaning into the cabin of this stranger’s car, in order to take the offered money.

His shirt hikes up as he reaches for the bill. The man’s dark eyes flick briefly to the strip of Dylan’s exposed skin. Only briefly. His gaze is all judgement and no interest.

It’s okay.

It’s fine.

It’s just annoying that the man doesn’t understand that he’s forcing Dylan to break a self-imposed rule of not leaning into a stranger’s car. How difficult is it to just hand the money out of the driver’s side window like a normal person? That’s fine. Whatever. He doesn’t get it. The dude’s obviously loaded, he doesn’t know what it’s like to be preyed on the way Dylan has been preyed on since he’s lived on the streets. He doesn’t know how quick Dylan’s heart speeds at the dangerous position he puts himself in. In a flash, the man could fist Dylan’s shirt collar and pull him into the car completely, pull a knife on him. 

But he won’t. Because this man is safe. Probably. Right.

The man doesn’t bother smiling when he passes Dylan the money. He barely glances at Dylan out of the corner of his eye. That’s okay, because Dylan never smiles either. Not for anyone. He says thank you and that’s the end of the exchange. Always.

No excessive gratitude. No fake smiles. Nothing but a simple thank you.

Dylan doesn’t get many regulars.

This man doesn’t seem to mind his stoic frown, his wary stare, because he always stops for Dylan without fail.

Something about that makes Dylan hesitate for the first time.

“Thanks. And, hey,” he says quietly, pulling back just enough to grip the door’s window frame. “What’s your name?”

It’s the only question Dylan can think to ask.

The man gives him a long, assessing look, and then answers, simply, “Morgan.”

Dylan ducks back out of the car’s cabin and steps back. The man drives off without further interaction, headlights disappearing down the road as he turns onto the highway.

Dylan sighs. Morgan, huh?

Morgan’s car is out of sight and all Dylan is left with is the money and the man’s name.

This part is what really gets under Dylan’s skin: the amount of money the man—Morgan—gives him..

The guy is obviously wealthy, could probably spare fifties without batting an eyelash. And how much does he give Dylan? Two dollars. Two fucking dollars exactly, every single time. But it’s not the low amount that has Dylan glaring at the money in his hands—no, it’s the bill.

A single two-dollar bill.

He frowns and swipes his calloused thumb over the number _two_ displayed in the corner of the currency. He used to like these as a kid. Used to collect them in a tin along with golden dollar coins. He thought they were special, rarities.

But they aren’t. They’re money. Worth no more than the amount borne plainly on their facade.

He knows this. He knows it’s just money. Worth only as much as capitalism dictates. For these, they’re worth a soda and a dollar menu item each. Soda, sugary juice. Bottled water costs more. The two-dollar bills are more valuable to Dylan as food in his stomach, rather than kept squirreled away like souvenir treasure. 

He knows this—he fucking knows this.

Still, he grits his teeth every time he spends one, and he always uses them last.

Dylan doesn’t even know why he finds himself looking for the man in the electric car every night. It’s not like a couple two-dollar bills a week is a significant haul. Many people are much more generous with the amounts they pass him through their windows.

It’s just… two-dollar bills. Who has those on them all the time, anyway? Who tosses them into a homeless man’s metaphorical tin can?

Dylan shakes his head and crumples the bill, shoving it into his pocket like it’s nothing significant.

Except, it is significant, because it makes Dylan notice this man in his fancy electric car, despite never exchanging a word with him other than a rare, muttered thank you.

Dylan’s certainly never heard the man’s voice before today. Like they both expected each other to speak different languages.

Dylan doesn’t blame him.

They are from two different worlds, after all.

“Sorry I’m late.”

When Trevor does finally show up, he’s panting from his light jog across the expansive parking lot. A light sheen of sweat across his forehead catches the streetlight’s glow.

Dylan is only half listening to the boy’s explanation for showing up an hour after sunset. He keeps his face tightly neutral, because the last thing Trevor needs is a scolding for causing him serious concern.

Trevor has enough to deal with, living on the streets at his age. Seventeen feels so far away to Dylan now, but he was failing to squeak through a high school graduation at that age. He couldn’t imagine living like this back then. Dylan didn’t find himself on the streets until he was twenty-two, and he’s only been living like this for a little over a year. He honestly can’t believe he made it through the winter.

Trevor’s going on about how he stopped to eat on the way over, because he wanted food from the hot food bar in the grocery store across the highway before it closed.

“It’s fine,” Dylan says, cutting off Trevor’s excuse. Dylan personally wouldn’t risk worrying anyone over something like that, but there’s no use making Trevor feel bad for wanting to eat. “The department store is open twenty-four seven. We’ve got all night.”

Trevor blinks, batting his dark eyelashes. His hair is still buzzed short from whatever life he had before this. Dylan hasn’t been willing to spare money for a haircut for the entire duration he’s been out here. His hair is a long dirty-blond mess tied into a haphazard bun. He trims it with craft scissors when it gets too far past his shoulders. He’s honestly not sure if Trevor will be able to stomach going so long without a proper haircut.

Trevor comes from a middle-class family, from what Dylan can surmise. Left them when they cut him off after he refused to get a job at seventeen, and was willing to show up for class even less. Dylan feels for him, really. He knows the weight of disappointed parents all too well. But so far, Trevor is adapting slowly to giving up his creature comforts.

“Might as well get this over with,” Trevor says with a smile that wavers and falls. He must be worried that Dylan’s angry with him for showing up so late. Dylan isn’t, not really.

“Yeah.” Still, Dylan can’t muster the desire for small talk, even though he knows it would do well to ease Trevor’s nerves. Dylan’s never been shy, but he’s never been particularly friendly either.

Dylan snags his fraying backpack from behind a nearby bush and stuffs his cardboard sign in it as best he can without folding it. He slings the bag over his shoulder and nods towards the brightly lit entrance of the department store across the emptying parking lot.

Darkness swaths them between pools of streetlights as they make their way together through the aisles of empty parking spaces. Dylan’s seen several people get robbed at this time of night, towards the back of the dark lot. He keeps an eye out for anyone approaching them too closely. Trevor studies the dirt under his fingernails.

When they step into the fluorescents outside the store’s entrance, Dylan stops Trevor and spins him to face him. Trevor frowns when Dylan pulls a mostly-clean handkerchief out of his backpack and tips some bottled water onto it.

“Why, though?” Trevor groans in a voice he doesn’t realize is strikingly juvenile—a tone reserved for use on overly affectionate grandmas and aunties. Dylan can practically hear the cry of, _mom, you’re embarrassing me_, in Trevor's matching scowl and eye roll when Dylan lifts the wet handkerchief and scrubs the dirt and sweat off of Trevor’s face.

“I told you, you’re the one of us who looks the least homeless,” Dylan murmurs, scrubbing at a streak of mud across Trevor’s cheek, probably from walking through some bushes, or lying down in them for a nap.

“You can say that again,” Trevor snorts, eyeing Dylan and bracing for an argument that doesn’t come.

Dylan ignores him.

In general, employees don’t like seeing people like them in their stores. At best they get sympathetic glances—at worst they get suspicion and downright accusation. As if they’re all thieves. Up to something. They like it even less when people like Dylan and Trevor travel in pairs, much less packs.

It’s better if only one of them goes into the store, so the employees and customers don’t get nervous. Trevor’s body weight hasn’t deteriorated much. His eyes aren’t rimmed purple with sleep deprivation. He’s not cut up and bruised from sleeping outside, and every other visible roughness their lifestyle entails.

Dylan currently has a fading bruise under his eye from a high school kid punching him to impress a group of girls. Masculine mating rituals at their finest.

Trevor’s fresh face will gather the least attention. So he’s the one Dylan’s sending into the store to buy winter coats for everyone who sleeps in the nook of bushes by the train tracks. Fall is just around the corner, and with its arrival, winter attire will skyrocket in price. Dylan’s been saving a portion of his money every day to make sure no one freezes to death this winter.

It’s something Dylan’s been saving up for. Something he wants to do because not everyone can resist the lure of drugs and alcohol in order to save enough up to buy the things that might save their lives. And who can blame them? A moment away from the mess of their lives is all that keeps most people in their position alive. Dylan’s lucky he’s never even touched drugs or alcohol or even cigarettes.

He pulls the money from his pocket, a stack of folded bills. He saved the highest ones so that the stack wouldn’t grow too thick. He slips the money into Trevor’s hand below the waist, discreet as a drug deal.

“How will I know what sizes?” Trevor asks, eyes briefly widening at the stack of money, as if surprised by the amount even at a glance. He pockets it quickly.

“Just get the biggest ones,” Dylan replies. “They’ll double as blankets. Pick the warmest, too.”

Trevor frowns, eyes blank. “How will I know which ones are the warmest?”

Dylan eyes him dubiously, unable to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “I don’t know. Whichever ones are soft and fluffy.”

Trevor heaves a deep breath and nods. He turns to go.

Dylan grabs him by the arm. “Waterproof,” he adds. “Make sure they’ve got water resistant fabric on the outside.”

Trevor nods again, expression precarious, as if acutely aware he’s heading into battle ill equipped.

Dylan drops Trevor’s arm and lets him go inside.

Away from the entrance is a good place to wait. Dylan moves far enough along the long, brick front wall of the building that he won’t annoy the employees on their breaks. He stares off into the parking lot for a long time, watches the small, steady flow of customers come and go through the bright automatic doors of the store.

A car pulls up along the curb. Dylan knows it’s trouble when it rolls to a stop in front of him.

There’s two men inside and several meters of sidewalk between Dylan and the car. Dylan doesn’t budge from his spot leaning against the wall.

The passenger window slides down. A well-built man leans out the window.

“Hey, what’s a cutie like you doing all by yourself?” the man asks, leering.

Dylan returns the question with a hard, unamused stare.

It’s not the first time he’s been propositioned by strangers while he’s alone at night. Hell, some people approach him during the day when he’s on the corner with his sign. It never fails to make his stomach drop and his pulse rise, because he knows what these people are after. They want to take advantage of someone they view as disposable. They’re approaching him because he’s unkempt, obviously needy. Down on his luck. All things that make them see him as easy prey.

Maybe they aren’t dangerous, really. Maybe all they want from him is sex with no strings attached, or cheap prostitution. It’s too risky, even if Dylan were interested.

“How about I give you a twenty and you come and have some fun with us, eh?” the man tries, unswayed by Dylan’s nonverbal rejection.

Dylan still isn’t interested, even with the offer of money. He almost scoffs at the low price.

But the offer doesn’t shock him and neither does the price.

Every single day he stands on the side of the road and watches people drive past him and judge his worth.

HOMELESS.  
PLEASE HELP.  
GOD BLESS.

He watches people drive by with their six dollar coffee, not bothering to spare him a dime from their seat cushions.

His value in currency depicted in one brief exchange.

The violence of inaction.

His worth a whopping zero to most people.

Twenty dollars to this man.

Why should it be any higher than zero? Or twenty?

Maybe Dylan should be flattered, but he feels more valued by the man who occasionally gives him two-dollar bills without so much as a smile. Morgan. Dylan knows his name now. Maybe this is what drove the impulse to know his name—feeling impossibly valued by his repeat donations over the last year.

The stranger in the car, still undeterred, reaches over the driver’s lap to lightly honk the horn. And then he waves a stiff bill out the window—presumably a twenty, as if this will strike temptation into Dylan’s loins.

“No thank you,” Dylan says finally, monotone and punctual. Loud enough for the man to hear. He doesn’t want to respond at all, but polite refusal is likely to diffuse the situation more than outright avoidance. Maybe.

There’s a beat in which the man’s facetious friendliness drains.

The man sneers, “Slut”, before the car speeds away.

Dylan exhales heavily, mood soured to curdles.

Where is Trevor? He should be done by now.

Shoppers come and go through the automatic doors a few meters away on the long building. There’s no sign of Trevor at all.

A prickling anxiety crawls down the back of Dylan’s neck.

Was it a mistake to trust Trevor with the money? It was no small amount, and Trevor is just a kid. Newly homeless. Newly wanting.

The temptation of over a hundred dollars in cash might have been too much for Trevor.

Is he going to come back, or has he already slipped out another one of the store’s entrances?

...No. Dylan and the others have shared their resources and expertise with Trevor.

Trevor wouldn’t take the money and run.

Dylan wraps an arm around himself, an old habit. His fingers pick at the peeling skin on his lips—a sign of slight dehydration. He should drink more during the day, but he hates having to leave his intersection to find a place to piss. Hates having to piss outside, generally. All the restaurants in the area have signs on the door that read: _restrooms for customers only_. What that really means is _homeless? fuck off_. The worst are the places that require a key for their restroom. A deterrent for people like Dylan, who have to swallow apprehension to ask the barista for the key when the only thing he’s willing to buy is a _Venti Water_.

Dylan scowls.

It’s definitely been over forty-five minutes. Almost an hour. It should have taken Trevor fifteen minutes tops. He took off with the money, didn’t he? Dylan bristles at the thought. 

What else could Dylan have used that money for? Eating better, for one. Buying a gym membership so that he has a place to wash up. Fuck. He should go inside, try to find the kid.

Dylan’s thoroughly distracted by his miniature, self-imposed panic. That’s why he doesn’t notice the same car from earlier pulling up again.

Dylan flinches with sudden adrenaline when the same man from earlier leans out of his window. 

“You sure you don’t wanna take me up on that offer?” the man calls. “Filthy rat like you ain’t gonna get a better one.”

A kindling of heat ignites through Dylan. He sees red. 

“No amount of money would make your dick tolerable,” Dylan snaps, pushing away from the wall.

He should have kept his mouth shut. Ignored the goading. These men are just trying to get a rise out of him now. They’re probably recording him surreptitiously on their phones to have a laugh about his outburst later.

But Dylan can’t take it. He’s not an easy target. His lack of security, lack of agency, doesn’t make him worth less than other people. He hates this, hates that men like this think they can get whatever they want out of him.

Worst of all, he hates that he’s not sure if what he said is true. How much money would it take for him to fuck some entitled dirtbag like this? How much money would it take for him to let himself be bought?

This is different from sex work. If it was a respectful transaction, if he was willingly offering sex for money, he could imagine himself charging a couple hundred bucks. But this? This guy? No. Not for a hundred. Not for a thousand. Not for anything—at least that’s what he tells himself.

But what’s the price, really, to let himself be used like that by the kind of person he detests?

A hundred thousand? More? Less?

Dylan doesn’t know. He can’t imagine how that kind of money would change his life. Instantly. Overnight. A true chance to start over.

He fucking hates himself for letting these thoughts even cross his mind. Hates that the world runs on money at all. Hates that he finds he prefers the guarded cooperation he finds sometimes in the homeless community.

The man yells something else—Dylan can’t register it past the buzz of adrenaline in his ears. All Dylan knows is this man isn’t giving up. He isn’t going to stand by and listen to this anymore.

Dylan stomps off, away from the car. He starts to make his way towards the brightly lit entrance of the store, but he stops cold when he catches the fed-up stare of an employee out on break.

They aren’t concerned about whatever shouting match they’re witnessing between Dylan and the men in the car.

They aren’t worried about the potential violence that might break out.

They’re just pissed it’s happening on their smoke break.

Dylan pivots and takes off in the other direction.

It’s not a good idea. The shadows grow stronger the farther he gets from the entrance of the building. He sticks along the wall, trying to control his breath, his anger. It’s no use. He can’t even will himself from rounding the corner of the large building, further away from the public eye. Isolated.

Who cares? It’s not like any bystanders would step in for someone like him. They haven’t before, not when there’s danger. At best the cops get called and Dylan ends up being the one tossed in a jail cell for the night. And then the cops will accuse him of getting into a fight on purpose so that he’ll have a roof over his head for the night. As if Dylan would voluntarily put himself in the piss-stink filth of the local police station holding cells.

The car rolls slowly along the curb to keep up with Dylan’s walking pace.

This is bad. It’s bad and Dylan knows it. He shouldn’t have came this way, and he’s too fucking proud to run back towards civilization with his tail between his legs. Too proud to beg the store employees for help, let alone asylum. 

So he keeps walking. Clamps his jaw closed to ignore the loud laughs and jeers tossed at him from the two men in the car.

That’s probably why he doesn’t notice someone coming up behind him.

By then it’s too late. 

The world goes dark.

Fabric of some sort—black fabric. A bag over his head? 

Yeah, yeah that’s definitely a fabric bag shoved over his head.

Dylan’s kicked in the back so hard he crumples to the pavement. His knees hit the ground hard, sending a shock of pain up his bones. A weight lifts off his shoulders—his backpack being torn away and discarded.

Someone grabs him, holds his arms in place while he struggles violently, bucks his body in a futile attempt to pull free. There’s too much strength gripping his arms, Dylan can’t pull away. Something slips around his wrists and is pulled tight, digging into his skin.

They’ve bound his hands behind his back.

Nothing good can come of whatever these people plan to do to him.

Worst of all, there’s no one to bear witness to any of this. Just Dylan, these people, and the large shadow cast by the side of the building. The shadow Dylan willingly walked into.

There’s a set of hands dragging him across the sidewalk, and then several sets of hands. He’s lifted, kicking and screaming off the ground. His body is dumped into a shallow compartment, stuffed, held in place long enough for something to slam over him, trapping him.

It doesn’t take long to realize where he is, even in the total darkness—the coarse plasticky carpet beneath him, the hum of a vibration all around him—a car engine. He’s in a trunk. These people have shoved him into the trunk of a car. The same one that was following him, no doubt.

His ears are ringing from the struggle, mind scattered and disoriented. 

His body is contorted painfully in the small space. All at once, his skin is both hot and slick with cold sweat. Nausea balloons inside him with a sudden onslaught of claustrophobia.

He needs to breathe, to will himself to stay calm as his breath threatens hyperventilation in the confines of the bag over his head.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Absurdly, one thought keeps ricocheting around his head, a siren of alarm and relief all at once: he’s glad it’s him.

He’s glad this is happening to him and not Trevor.

It could have been Trevor.

It could have been any of them.

If Dylan had to choose, he would rather take the bullet himself.

Even if the kid probably did run off with the money.


	2. Chapter Two

The temperature in the trunk quickly rises with the heat of Dylan’s cramped body stuffed inside. His skin is slick with sweat and every breath of warm air feels like suffocation. The bag over his face doesn’t help, every time he sucks in breath it’s filtered through the dark fabric and then exhaled back into his face. 

It’s an eternity before he can still his involuntary struggle for escape, for breath—his body flailing and pulling against the restraints on his wrists without permission. Eventually a sort of peace does come, a stillness, the sick aftertaste of frayed nerves.

He tries it all: he screams for help as the car tires rumble beneath him, he strenuously twists his body around in the tight space to kick at the lid of the trunk, he maneuvers around to feel unseeingly for anything stowed inside the trunk that might help—there’s nothing.

It’s another eternity before the car engine is cut and the car groans into park.

He’s been in the trunk for hours now, maybe longer, maybe a whole day. His body gave in to the exhaustion and heat several times, allowing him to sleep. The hunger clawing at the pit of his stomach for the better part of the journey has quieted, leaving him only with a buzz of swimming thoughts, a sort of delirium. He has to piss, badly. His bladder is painfully full, but not yet full enough to threaten to release involuntarily.

It’s been a day, at most. Not much longer than that.

The only reason Dylan isn’t screaming as soon as the car stops, is the noise beyond the trunk. An echoing metallic clatter. Wherever he is, it’s indoors—a loading dock, a parking garage? There’s silence except for the shuffle of footsteps on concrete, the click of the trunk popping open.

No words are spoken when Dylan is hoisted from the trunk by a grip tangled in his shirt. Not even a threat of violence. That’s what keeps Dylan from struggling, even as he’s righted with his feet against the floor and shoved in a direction he can’t see with the bag still over his head.

He walks, guided by the hand fisted in the back of his shirt. He doesn’t ask questions because he knows they won’t be answered. He doesn’t struggle because where would he go, with his hands bound behind his back and his sight stolen? If he couldn’t manage to wiggle the bag off in the hours he spent alone in the trunk, he certainly won’t be able to wrestle it off in the scarce seconds after he breaks away from his captor.

Well, captors.

There are definitely at least four sets of footsteps other than his.

A door opens, swinging loudly on heavy hinges. The light that filters through the black fabric bag grows brighter. Another set of doors. Dylan’s feet slip on the first step of a staircase. His stomach drops momentarily, but his captors keep him upright.

He’s being led down. Down a flight of stairs.

Down, down, down.

Down isn’t good. Down is passed several more doors, several more flights of stairs. 

Wherever Dylan is, he’s underground now.

Deep underground.

Something tells him that if his captors have their way, he’s never going to see daylight again.

Eventually, he’s brought into a room filled with the hushed drone of voices—all of which come to an abrupt halt as the door swings closed behind them. Dylan’s tugged harshly to a stop.

The bag comes off.

The first thing that Dylan registers is the cool air hitting his face. He devours lungfuls, glad to be rid of the hot, recycled air of the bag.

He struggles to blink the harsh fluorescents out of his eyes.

The room is… an auditorium of sorts. No windows. A wide stage with a gleaming black floor. Rows and rows of velvet lined theater seating, all empty, cascading up into balcony seating. The stage is caked in dust in several areas, like it hasn’t been used in a long while. 

Dylan recognizes two of the people at his flank. The men in the car who propositioned him. Another man, the one still seizing his shirt in a firm grip, must be the third man, the one who came up behind him while he was distracted and pulled the bag over his head.

They’ve stopped him on the floor below the empty stage. In the front row of theater seating, two well dressed men watch him curiously. One stands. Approaches him.

Dylan eyes him warily. He’s a white man in a dark blue suit. Probably no older than thirty. Skin lightly tanned, intentionally—not the irregular, sun baked farmer’s tan that Dylan bears. His white-blonde hair is short and pristine, probably containing some measure of product. Nothing like Dylan’s own unruly hair, messy and tied haphazardly atop his head in a bun.

He doesn’t want to compare himself to this man—but how can he not? These people have abducted him. They want him for something. The class difference between them is all too clear. Dylan’s heart sinks low in his chest, as though through the slow drag of quicksand. 

It’s worse than he thought. He wasn’t taken by some sort of everyday criminal low-lifes. Whatever this operation is, it has money behind it. 

Whatever this is, Dylan isn’t going to make it out alive.

“I’m sure this is the one you asked for,” the man from the car says—the one who catcalled him. “Only one who fit the description.”

What?

Why would someone ask for him to be taken, specifically? He’s cut contact with his entire family—hell, with everyone he’s ever met. No one cares enough about him to have him abducted. Even if someone did want to abduct him, no one he’s ever met has the funds to pay a criminal organization to do it.

Maybe… maybe it’s less personal than Dylan’s reading it. Maybe this man just wanted someone abducted who fit Dylan’s description, and it’s not about who he is, rather, what he looks like.

Yeah. That has to be it. 

Dylan’s breath calms from rapid to something controlled, reined in.

They took him based on his looks. Blonde hair. Green eyes. Mid-Twenties. Easy target.

The man in the suit steps closer and grabs Dylan’s jaw without permission or preamble. The wealthy man’s steely blue eyes rove over Dylan’s face in a scathing evaluation. 

Dylan’s scowl deepens to something miserable as he’s assessed like cattle. He wants to lurch his head forward and bite this man’s fingers. He refrains. Struggling will get him nowhere, not here where there are several men dressed like security guards nearby, pistols strapped to their hip. “Are you sure this one will work?” The still-seated man asks. His three-piece suit is fitted, colored a deep maroon. 

“Not at all,” the man assessing Dylan answers, frowning despite the glint of amusement in his eyes. “But it’s the closest thing to a soft spot I’ve seen my brother have.”

His brother? Soft spot? So Dylan was targeted because he fits someone's preference for young blonde men.

Pathetic.

The man in the maroon suit sits back, crosses his arms, seemingly satisfied with this answer. 

There’s no further protest from anyone in the room.

Dylan supposes it’s now or never if he wants to speak up, but the questions that come to mind are generic, laughable. He asks them anyway. “What is this? What do you want—”

The man in the blue suit cuts him off with a scathing look of disdain. “Such boring questions. What a waste of that pretty mouth.”

Dylan recoils visibly, clamps his jaw shut. A flare of anger and shock rises through him in equal measure to the disgust. He’s too stunned to speak, too rattled by the implications. Is this whole thing really about sex, after all? The propositions from the car weren’t just a ploy to distract him long enough to nab him?

“Our beloved doctor has arrived for his duties today, I trust?” Blue Suit asks over his shoulder to a set of guards.

“Yes,” the two guards answer in unison. Then, the one on the left continues, “He’s treating the new inventory as we speak.”

“Good,” Blue Suit replies, “Put this one in the queue.”

With that, Dylan is grabbed by the elbows by these new guards and ushered out of the room. He drags his feet as much as he can muster without risking getting manhandled for resisting. 

He takes in everything he can—the sight, the smell of the building. The theater is huge, the stage elaborate. The detailing on the walls of the theater is as ornate and gaudy as that of the theaters he went to as a child on field trips to see plays.

What is this theater used for? The location his captors have brought him to doesn’t seem to correlate at all with the theory that this is some sort of sex trafficking ring—even a lavish one.

Or… maybe it does.

Dylan swallows, a thought sinking in, pieces suddenly fitting together. 

If this is a sex trafficking ring, the theater and the stage could very well be for an auction.

But… the whole room smells of dust and disuse. Aren’t trafficking rings usually always trying to move their _product?_

The guards push Dylan through a door to the side of the theater leading to a long hallway. There aren’t any windows, and the floor is made of concrete, the walls basic cinder block swathed in white paint. It’s well lit by lights lining the creases of the ceiling. Dylan sickeningly reminds himself that they’re underground.

A theater. Underground.

Nothing about this leaves room for hope that the next few hours won’t be excruciating.

Dylan is ushered through the door at the end of the long, empty hallway.

The noise is the first thing that hits him. Muffled sobs. Whimpers of distress.

It’s some sort of holding room.

Cowering bodies line the far wall in various arrays of attire. Each one has their arms bound behind them, some are gagged with dirty cloths slotted into their mouth and tied around their head. Most aren’t gagged but are still trying their best not to cry, let alone speak.

Several guards—too many guards—walk back and forth in front of the line of captives. They must have instructed these people not to speak. There’s drying blood splattered on the concrete in front of some of the victims, a sure sign that disobedience is rewarded with violence.

Dylan takes a cue from the atmosphere of the room and keeps his mouth clamped shut.

One of Dylan’s escorts shoves Dylan towards the line of people and says to a nearby guard, “Add this one to the front of the queue.”

Dylan stumbles and crashes into the new guard, only to be pushed away and prodded with the butt of a rifle. The new guard says nothing, but gestures with a jerk of his head towards one end of the line. 

Dylan’s not dragging his feet anymore, not with these guards armed and ready. He takes his spot at what he can only assume is the front of the line of captives, and slides down the cinderblock wall to sit on the cold concrete floor.

Absurdly, he thinks the cool concrete room is much better than the suffocating heat of the car’s trunk.

A sideways glance reveals the various emotional and physical states of the other captives. Every single one of them is young. Late teens, twenties. The few victims wearing business casual attire are by far the oldest, and still look no older than thirty-five. Some are somber with blank stares. Some barely rumpled, others with torn clothes and shallow cuts from putting up a fight. Several of the women are in club attire, dark streaks of mascara running down their cheeks.

Dylan’s breath catches in his throat. He looks away, stares at the concrete floor in front of him. He wants so badly to know these people’s stories. To compare notes. To find some commonality that can give them some inkling of why they are here.

Except… Dylan knows why they’re here. Human trafficking of some sort. It has to be. It’s what is happening. There’s no denying it now that he’s seen the others.

For what, though? Organs? Sex? 

At worst, they’ll have their organs harvested and sold on some sort of black market. Best case… they’ll be sold into prostitution. He can only see that as the best possible outcome here because it leaves him alive and… right now getting out of this alive is all that matters.

Dylan’s heart beats faster than it did when he was being attacked. Faster than the entire time he was deep within a panic attack in the trunk. A sickly fear bleeds into his veins, thick and obstructive, forcing his heart into overtime. 

All this time, somewhere in the back of his mind he had been assuming that the worst thing that could come of this situation was rape. Now, he’s not sure. Whatever this is, it looks permanent. There’s no chance they’re planning to let any of these people go.

...No chance they’re planning to let him go.

Eventually, a guard comes out of a door Dylan hasn’t seen open yet. He grabs Dylan without a word, hoists him to his feet. All Dylan can do is follow.

There’s another long hallway, this one lined with closed doors. All certainly locked, or dead ends, anyway. Not that Dylan could break free and wrestle them open with his hands bound.

The guard leads him into a room that makes Dylan double-take. 

A doctor’s office.

There’s no doubt—it’s definitely a doctor’s office. It looks just like the tiny clinic exam rooms he hated as a child. His parents would guilt him whenever he had to visit the doctor for state-mandated vaccines or because his fever got too high. Doctors were an expense his parents could afford, but would rather avoid. It took time out of their busy work schedules. Dylan’s never had a good experience in a doctor’s office.

There’s a sink against the wall, cabinets sure to hold needles and vials and other things Dylan doesn’t want to think about. Mounted to the walls are various equipment to take basic vitals. There’s a translucent container on the wall marked biohazard, full of used needles. There’s a counter built into the wall near the sink, a computer set up on it. A rolling chair in front of that. 

In the center of the small room is a reclining exam table with a bright light overhead. 

That’s what the guard ushers him onto. Dylan considers fighting, eyes darting around the room for something, anything, that might be used to overpower the guard he’s now alone with. He could give the man a swift kick, knock him into the cabinets. And then what? The guard will draw the gun holstered menacingly on his hip and Dylan will be worse off than before.

Dylan spends too long swirling in indecisive turmoil, because as soon as he manages to climb onto the exam table, the guard is binding his ankle to the table with a soft, padded leather cuff.

Of course. Restraints built into the table. Why hadn’t he noticed them before?

With one ankle locked in place, the choice of whether or not to struggle has been thoroughly removed from the equation. All Dylan can do is watch his other ankle get strapped into the other side of the table.

Next, the guard forces Dylan upright. Dylan flinches when something cold and smooth brushes against his wrist—a knife, it must be a knife, because the binds around his wrists are cut free.

Naturally, both of his hands are immediately bound to either side of the table, in soft, padded restraint cuffs.

Dylan swallows as he watches the guard wordlessly exit the room the way they came, leaving Dylan completely alone.

Is this it? Is this the end of the road? Are his organs about to be harvested? 

Will this room be the last thing he ever sees?

A bee-hive swarm of regret writhes through his nerves. He should have fought. Should have done something, anything, to grant himself some semblance of comfort at the end. Because knowing he tried and failed and _fought_ has to be better than this—better than walking into his own coffin without protest.

It’s over. Done with.

All he can do now is wait.


	3. Chapter Three

The solitude in the small exam room is far from a reprieve. Every minute that passes only allows reality to sink its talons further into Dylan’s throat.

The reality that he’s not getting out of this place. 

He needs to get out of this place.

Dylan tugs hard on the padded leather cuffs, which barely have any give to them at all. The struggle to free himself starts small, tentative, escalating until he’s bucking on the exam table against his restraints.

It’s to no avail, of course. The struggle only serves to render him breathless.

Which is possibly the worst state he could be in when the door clicks open.

A man walks into the room, sipping a disposable paper coffee cup, demeanor hurried, on the edge of annoyance.

A man with silky dark hair and graying temples.

A man with a button-down shirt that fits across his broad chest exceptionally well.

A man who drives a fancy electric car, who gives Dylan two-dollar bills every time he passes by his intersection.

Recognition shoots through Dylan like lightning. He squints, and then gapes, his brain stuttering in its attempt to process what he’s seeing.

Morgan.

His regular donor.

Morgan—he said his name is Morgan.

Morgan looks equally shocked, his stern, dark eyes widening to something almost childlike, almost innocent. 

There’s nothing innocent about the fact that this man is here.

It’s the guy—Morgan—definitely Morgan. The fucking regular who wordlessly hands over two-dollar bills a few times a week when Dylan’s standing by the road with his sign.

This guy, this fucking guy—he’s the reason Dylan’s in this mess? He requested Dylan to be abducted? Moreover, he works in this crime ring? What the fuck is this?

For the first time since the trunk of the car, Dylan screams. A deep, feral, desperate sound, filled with heavy breath and half-formed thoughts he can’t manage to get out straight.

“You—you, it’s, it’s your fault I’m… for what? I can’t—”

The door has long since snapped shut behind this man. His face is unmistakably drained of color, exacerbating his dark features. His expression is plainly haunted. 

This only riles Dylan up further. He thrashes hard against the restraints. “Why did you do this, why did you do this, why did you do this?!”

It’s not eloquent or composed, but it’s all Dylan has: a repetition of desperation. The unyielding need for answers.

“I assure you,” the man says, quiet and seething, halting Dylan’s struggle. It’s only the second time Dylan has ever heard his voice, despite how many times Morgan has passed him money through his car window. “This was not my doing.”

Dylan’s chest is heaving, his throat raw with strain, with emotion. Tears of distress bead hot in his eyes, roll humiliatingly down his cheeks. 

Why does this detail of all things bother him so much? Why does it feel like such a betrayal that this man he barely knows is here, involved in this mess somehow? It doesn’t make sense that it’s affecting Dylan so heavily. Still, his heart pounds wildly in his chest, as if clawing at his ribcage for answers.

Morgan is staring as if Dylan’s the dangerous thing in the room. As if Dylan is a bomb ripe for diffusing. He looks like he wants to pull all of Dylan’s wires out until he stops ticking.

Dylan wants to keep his mouth closed, keep his dignity intact, not give this man one more ounce of attention.

Instead, Dylan says, “This wasn’t your doing? Yeah fucking right!” 

The man only frowns, the sternness most familiar to Dylan bleeding back into his features until his entire face is a mask of cold stone.

“What do you want to get out of this, huh?” Dylan asks, teeth bared. “Sex? It’s sex, isn’t it? Holy shit—if you’re that desperate, why couldn’t you have just fucking offered me money or propositioned me like a normal person?”

The man wrinkles his nose, as if in distaste.

Dylan snorts, or laughs, or sobs—how dare this person recoil in distaste as if Dylan’s guesses are more vile than this situation. “Why have me abducted? Why the fuck!? I probably would have said yes, if it were you. Would’ve even done it for free.”

That last part comes out quick and hysterical, before Dylan can put a filter on the rawness of his thoughts. His cheeks were already flushed from distress, but their color surely deepens now.

He snaps his mouth closed, deflating with embarrassment.

What he just said is true, and that’s more humiliating than being restrained on this exam table, offered up for this man like a sacrificial lamb.

Dylan’s fantasized about it, in private moments. Being whisked away by some rich guy who wants someone to take care of. It’d be an easy exchange. Comfort for comfort. Dylan could provide that for someone. And this man in particular, with his serious demeanor and his formal attire, was easy to insert into that fantasy. 

But it’s just that—a fantasy. Not real life. Exchanges like that are never equal. Never simple. He knows that, despite his lack of experience.

Dylan’s left alone with his embarrassment, because the man doesn’t acknowledge his embarrassing confession at all—he simply turns around and sets his coffee cup on the counter, busying himself with snapping on a pair of powder blue exam gloves.

“Is Morgan even your real fucking name?” Dylan asks, almost a growl. He’s desperate to get some semblance of an answer out of this man.

“Morgan is my name,” he answers tonelessly. 

Dylan’s taken aback. He actually gave his real name, even knowing Dylan would be abducted later that night? A tiny stream of relief flows through Dylan, only to be replaced by a dam bursting.

It’s… not a good thing, is it, that this man gave his name so freely?

It means he doesn’t think Dylan is going to ever have a chance to go to the authorities to report him. 

Dylan might as well try to humanize himself to this person in some way, make it harder for him to do whatever he’s about to do. The only thing Dylan can think of that makes him human is his name.

“My name’s Dylan.” He glares at the man, Morgan. Morgan, Morgan, Morgan. Dylan won’t forget his name, even if he isn’t ever going to make it out of this. “Why me?” The question slips out before he can stop it.

Morgan’s eyes grow hard. He doesn’t answer. He does, however, approach the exam table. He’s tall in a way that looms without effort. And he does loom, standing over Dylan and looking him over with an assessing gaze.

“What do you want?” Dylan asks through clenched teeth.

“To answer your previous question,” Morgan says, quiet and lethal. “It’s mere coincidence that you’re here. A coincidence I have nothing to do with.”

Dylan practically snarls in response, “You expect me to believe that?”

Even as Dylan spits the words, his doubt grows. The shock was plain on Morgan’s face when he entered the room. He may very well be telling the truth.

Morgan shrugs, attention flitting away from Dylan, as if in thought. “I suppose I expect your concerns to be much greater than me or my intentions as soon as you leave this room.”

A chill crawls on a swarm of insect legs down Dylan’s spine. 

“It is rather unfortunate that you wound up on my exam table,” Morgan continues, almost wistfully. “The Collective only sources stock from the area when they have a last minute shortage.”

That sends Dylan’s mind reeling. Stock? Shortage? The Collective? His brows knit and his teeth worry his lip as he struggles to form a thought.

“Stock?”

Morgan snorts, as if Dylan said something funny. “As I said, you have much greater concerns as soon as you leave this room. I assure you that I will be no more than an afterthought soon enough.”

Dylan can’t process what that means—hell, he doesn’t _want_ to process it.

Another thought strikes him. “Wait, no—that’s not right. The people who grabbed me, they drove me around for hours. Definitely hours. Why? Just to disorient me?”

Morgan tilts his head, as if the question is utter nonsense. “No. We’re a three hour drive from that shopping center you panhandle at. This isn’t my day job.”

More information that no one would give to Dylan freely, if they ever thought he would escape this place.

Dylan shakes away the dread. “What the fuck is it then, if it’s not your day job?”

“I work a second job for extra money,” Morgan deadpans.

Dylan stares outright.

This man doesn’t want for money, clearly, not judging by the expensive car he drives or the tailored clothes he wears. It’s a joke. 

This man is _joking_ with Dylan.

“Ha, ha,” Dylan drawls sarcastically.

A ghost of a smile twitches at one corner of Morgan’s mouth, gone before Dylan can confirm its existence.

This is his chance—maybe his only chance. Dylan coaxes his voice into something softer, fighting to keep the accusation out of it.

“You give me money every week,” he starts cautiously. “You can’t be bad. Not all bad.”

Dylan’s lying, but whatever. It’s all he has.

Morgan’s previously loosened posture stiffens.

“Please, you can help me. You _want_ to help me, I know you—”

In a flash, Morgan reaches out and grabs Dylan’s face, turning his head to force eye contact. The touch feels intimate despite the thin exam gloves and the harsh grip.

Morgan leans in, voice low and dangerous when he says, “You have no idea who I am or what I’ve done.”

Dylan’s eyes widen, and then narrow, stinging with tears again against his will as whatever hope he had managed to build up swirls down the drain.

Morgan frowns, deadly serious. He leans back, releasing Dylan’s face. His demeanor is schooled back into careful indifference. “Now, I have a job to do and I would very much like to avoid sedating you. I trust you’ll cooperate to avoid that eventuality?”

Dylan grits his teeth and nods. What choice does he have?

Morgan gets right to work.

It takes ample effort to unclench his jaw when Morgan hovers a disposable thermometer above his lips. The plastic strip goes under his tongue and Morgan stares at his wristwatch idly until he takes the thermometer back and tosses it in the trash.

“Ninety-eight point two,” Morgan mutters as he records the data in the desktop computer stationed on the table.

The man’s gloved fingers brush the bare skin of Dylan’s arm as he fastens a blood pressure cuff around his arm, stethoscope pressed to his arm to listen to his strained heartbeat as the cuff tightens. Morgan records this result too. He shines a dim light in Dylan’s eyes, tracks their movement.

“Open, just for a moment,” Morgan instructs, tilting Dylan’s head back with a finger under his chin. “Keep in mind that biting me will not help your situation.”

Is that a joke or a warning?

Either way, Dylan replies, “Yeah, it’d sure feel good though.”

An unreadable emotion flickers across Morgan’s face. “Open,” he commands again.

Dylan obeys and is rewarded with gloved fingers in his mouth; the taste of latex or something like it. Fingers slip under his cheek, slide pointedly along his teeth, as if counting them. Dylan’s never felt more like cattle.

“Tongue down,” Morgan says, clicking on a pen light and shining it inside Dylan’s mouth to peer at the back of his throat.

“No signs of oral disease or infection,” Morgan mutters, returning to his computer.

Everything goes into the computer, either a variable or a note. Why? Is it related to harvesting his organs? Or maybe the vitals are important information for selling him to other sex trafficking rings?

It doesn’t make sense.

The next few tests Morgan conducts make it all too clear that organ harvesting is off the table. He unties Dylan’s hair to sift methodically through the strands, noting aloud that Dylan doesn’t have lice. 

“Of course I don’t have lice,” Dylan scoffs, glaring. “I’d just cut all my hair off if I did.”

Morgan ignores him, gathering Dylan’s hair back up and retying it behind his head with the hair tie.

The man’s fingers in his hair send an unwanted tingle of pleasure across Dylan’s scalp, down his spine. The pleasant sensation alarms him.

“Why would you think I have lice?” Dylan asks, struggling to keep his tone even, struggling to forget Morgan’s fingers in his hair. “Because I’m homeless?”

“Standard check,” Morgan answers noncommittally. “All our inventory goes through the same procedure.”

Dylan’s nose wrinkles. “_Inventory?_” The word comes out incredulous, but really, Dylan has known damn well this whole time that he’s just some sort of product to these people. To this person. To Morgan.

“I need to do the same check on your pubic hair,” Morgan says indifferently. “I’m going to open your pants.”

The words are like whiplash. Dylan doesn’t have time to think or even protest before Morgan is methodically unbuttoning Dylan’s worn jeans and probing inside.

Dylan flinches at the touch of fingers in his curls of blond pubic hair that leads in a dusted trail up to his navel. 

“What are you doing?” Dylan hisses, face growing hot. 

It’s a pointless question. Morgan already told him. 

“Checking for parasites and signs of sexually transmitted diseases,” Morgan answers anyway, toneless.

This man must be a doctor of some sort in his real life too—the matter of fact way he answers Dylan’s questions seems like reflex more than anything. As if he’s used to answering the mundane questions of his patients.

Is he always this cordial to all the victims he examines?

Does he ever say a word to them? Somehow, Dylan can’t picture it. He can only imagine Morgan standing over a struggling victim going about the exam with stony silence and a complete disregard for their plight.

Maybe that’s just Dylan’s mind scrambling to make himself special, somehow. A special case… because if Morgan’s treating him differently than most of his so-called patients here, then maybe that means Dylan might have a chance to persuade him into helping him escape.

Though, asking pointedly hadn’t worked at all before.

The muscles in Dylan’s stomach clench under Morgan’s touch. The man’s fingers ghosting below his hemline is uncomfortable, yet also illicitly _good_. As if Morgan is really just his doctor, unfamiliar enough to warrant embarrassment but safe enough for Dylan to shamefully enjoy his touch.

There’s nothing about this man that should conjure a sense of safety. Yet, he is a familiar face in this hellish scenario. Dylan can’t help but be drawn to him.

Morgan’s gloved finger slips under the hem of Dylan’s underwear, lifting it to shine a pen light into the space.

Dylan’s breath quickens—he’s never been touched like this, never had his genitals ogled by another person. Not that Morgan’s expression is anything but professional. What is he even looking for? Signs of warts or something as equally unsightly? Or is he just making note of whether or not Dylan is circumsized, a detail that may be of interest to potential buyers?

Fuck.

Dylan can’t think of a single reason any of this matters unless he really is going to be sold to some rich creep as a sex slave.

Morgan withdraws and the hem of Dylan’s boxer briefs snap closed again. With practiced ease, Morgan zips Dylan’s fly back up and buttons his jeans closed.

Dylan’s all too aware of how quick his breathing is, his nostrils flared, his face red with heat.

Morgan straightens, returns to the computer. This allows Dylan a moment to squeeze his eyes shut, regain his composure to the sound of clacking keyboard keys.

“Do you currently take any medications?” Morgan asks.

Dylan cracks an eye open to look at the man, who has his back turned, attention completely focused on the computer in front of him. Of course he doesn’t have any current medications. He doesn’t even have insurance. Something tells Dylan that Morgan can surmise as much on his own.

“Medications?” Morgan prompts again, a bit of impatience crawling into his calm.

“No.”

“Any known allergies?”

“No.”

“Smoker or Drinker?”

“Neither.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Drugs?”

“Nope.”

“History of illness in the family?”

“No idea.”

Part of Dylan wonders what the point of complying to these questions is. Cooperation feels as much like admitting defeat as it does holding out hope. He has to believe Morgan might change his mind about helping him by the end of this session.

Morgan sounds almost bored when he asks, “Have you ever had unprotected sex?”

The question takes Dylan aback. Though he supposes he should have expected it.

“No,” he answers, attempting to sound equally as bored.

“How many sexual partners have you had?” There’s not an inkling of curiosity in Morgan’s monotone.

“None,” Dylan answers in a tone he hopes is as equally as flat as Morgan’s. 

It’s easy to exude nonchalance when he’s not ashamed of this fact. What time did he have for fooling around with other people his age when he was constantly on the cusp of being kicked out by his parents? 

Hell, he barely had any acquaintances growing up, let alone friends. How could he, with the leash his parents kept on him strangling him so tight he had to be careful not to show anyone the metaphorical bruises?

“Alright,” Morgan says, opening a drawer below the sink and pulling out a tray of viles. “I’m going to draw some of your blood to run some tests. After that, you’re done.”

“Why?” Dylan asks, face scrunching in distaste. He’s never had his blood drawn before—at least not that he remembers.

Morgan doesn’t look at him when he answers, “To make sure your blood is safe for exposure to our staff and clients.”

Dylan blanches, too stunned by that particular wording to form a reply. All he can do is watch as Morgan ties off part of his bound arm and looks for a place to stick the needle. 

“Make a fist,” he prompts, and Dylan does, because he wants this to be over as fast as possible.

It’s not that he’s squeamish about blood, but as Morgan slides the needle into his arm with a sting of pain, Dylan can’t help but find the drain of his blood into the tube disturbing.

Something about seeing his blood filling tube after tube makes Dylan’s head spin. It doesn’t hurt at all, doesn’t feel like anything, really. But after the fifth tube is filled, Dylan cringes at the amount of blood no longer in his body.

Morgan’s gaze flicks to Dylan’s face, which must be exuding discomfort. “This is nothing, really.”

“Huh?”

“The blood. It’s only half a cup or so, give or take.”

Dylan doesn’t know what to make of this offered information. Doesn’t know what to make of this man who seemingly read his mind, or his disturbed expression, and decided to comfort him. Even if that comfort is excruciatingly distant.

“There’s over a gallon of blood in the average adult.”

“Oh,” Dylan needs to say something because Morgan is trying, in some way, to be helpful right now. And Dylan needs to coax out more of that from this man. “It just seems like a lot, in the tubes.”

Morgan hums in response and slips the needle from Dylan’s arm, quickly pressing a small square pad to the tiny wound and wrapping his arm with a stretchy bandage. 

As Morgan puts away the equipment and disposes of the needle, he says, almost awkwardly, into the silence, “Your body replaces this amount of blood fairly quickly, it should only take about—”

Dylan stares as Morgan cuts his own thought off, clamping his mouth shut suddenly.

“Well, nevermind,” Morgan finishes after a long pause. He's frowning now, unmistakably, expression almost angry.

Dread. That’s all Dylan can feel—a cold, numbing shroud of dread.

“I’m not going to live long enough to replace the blood you just took, am I?” Dylan guesses, eyes locked on Morgan’s face.

Morgan doesn’t answer. Instead, he says, “We’re done here.”

Dylan sucks in a shuddering breath, his brain screaming with shrill alarm bells that tell him that Morgan’s avoidance of the question is more of a confirmation than anything.

He’s a dead man.

Morgan knows Dylan has an expiration date.

Fuck—his limbs tremble with the willpower it takes to stop himself from thrashing against the restraints again, from screaming wildly and fruitlessly until his lungs burn.

It doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make sense.

What purpose can they possibly have for this examination, the questions, the elaborate facility and abduction, if they are only planning to kill Dylan quickly?

Dylan can’t think of a single reason—except—medical testing, maybe? Unlawful experimentation?

Fuck. There’s no way. No way in hell. That’s like something cheesy out of a science-fiction movie. No way.

Where is he going to be sent to next? Will he see this odd, reserved man ever again? Does it matter? It’s not like Morgan was ever going to help him. He likely can’t, even if he wanted to—which Dylan assumes he doesn’t. Whatever this place is, the operation seems huge. The whole thing reads as a large organization, of which Morgan must be a small cog.

It’s been hours since Dylan’s had the opportunity to resolve any basic human needs. He hasn’t eaten or drank anything in over half a day. Ever since the trunk his bladder has felt like it’s on the verge of bursting.

Is he really about to be sent to his death with his body this uncomfortable? With the ache of thirst in his throat and the grip of hunger in his belly? Will he live long enough to be beaten by the guards for making a mess when his bladder inevitably releases involuntarily?

Dylan closes his eyes. These are such silly, silly things to be worried about when his life is in this much danger. Concerning himself with bodily comfort of all things feels like giving up, like surrendering to his fate, his death sentence. Still, it feels like self-care, too, to make sure he’s as comfortable as he can be in his last minutes or hours. Even inmates on death row have that right.

With a deep breath and his eyes still squeezed shut, Dylan asks, “Wherever I’m taken next, will I be fed? Given water?”

Morgan is silent for a long moment. “No.”

The single syllable hurts more than anything else Dylan has been through today. It opens up a deep, seeping psychological wound he’s not sure he’ll be able to recover from. Not that it matters. That seals his future. Wherever they’re taking him next, it’s the end of the road.

“What about a toilet? Will they even let me take a piss before they kill me?” The words are harsh and accusing. Hot, angry tears build up in his eyes.

Morgan is quiet long enough that Dylan opens his watery eyes to glare at him.

The words were bait, and Morgan’s silence speaks too loudly. Morgan isn’t denying that this organization plans to kill him.

“There will be a drain on the floor of your holding cell,” Morgan says, eventually.

Dylan can’t hold back the bitter bark of laughter. He feels crazed, hysterical. This is too fucking much. He’s going to snap.

After a few wheezing breaths that border between hyperventilation and humorless laughter, Dylan says, “Can I ask you for something, then?”

Morgan levels his stare. “You can try.”

“I’m thirsty. And my bladder is killing me. I’d like to take a piss somewhere that isn’t a drain on the floor.”

Morgan visibly hesitates, surprised by the requests.

“Consider it a last request,” Dylan says with another humorless laugh. “I just want to die with a few basic needs met.”

Morgan inhales deeply, and then goes to the sink. Dylan watches, disbelief rising, as Morgan pours whatever’s left of his coffee down the drain. He rinses the cup out by swirling it under the faucet several times, before allowing it to fill.

Dylan’s stunned by the compliance, the simple kindness as Morgan approaches with the cup full of sink water. He’s even more floored when Morgan unbuckles the cuffs on one of his hands.

“Here,” he says, nudging the cup against Dylan’s freed hand.

Dylan takes the cup gratefully, barely noticing how Morgan steps back out of reach as he leans forward as much as the remaining restraints will allow and chugs the water. 

Sink water has never tasted so fucking good. It reminds Dylan of the times when his parents would lock him out of the house as a child and he’d have to drink from the garden hose. The water is ice cold, something Dylan doubts is an accident, and he’s grateful for relief the water brings.

When the cup is empty, Dylan hands it back to Morgan and wipes the streaks of water from his chin.

“Thanks,” he says, breathless from downing the water like a man stranded in the desert under a baking sun.

Morgan doesn’t acknowledge the gratitude, instead he says, “The guards will not allow me to take you to a staff restroom.”

“Can you try,” Dylan asks, pained. He’s suddenly all too aware of how much his bladder hurts.

Morgan’s eyes flick down to the large, now-empty paper cup in his hand.

“Wait…” Dylan says, realizing what Morgan may be thinking.

Morgan doesn’t respond, simply unbuckles the restraints on Dylan’s ankles, leaving Dylan with only a single remaining padded cuff locked around one of his wrists.

“Stand up,” Morgan instructs.

Dylan complies, sliding his body awkwardly to hop off the exam table, his feet finding purchase on the floor. His restrained wrist is bound awkwardly to the side of the table closest to where he’s standing.

A brief urge for violence flashes through Dylan—with his legs free, he could kick this man hard enough to send him flying into the wall. Then what? With one wrist still bound, the act of rebellion will only serve to anger the person willing to show him even a scrap of humanity in this place.

He doubts he would be able to unbuckle the remaining restraint before Morgan calls for a guard or plunges a needle full of sedatives into his neck.

Morgan’s eyes flick deliberately to Dylan’s fly. “You may unfasten your own pants this time.”

Dylan does so with a grimace, a little clumsy one-handed. He doesn’t pull his dick through the slot in his briefs, instead flashing a look at Morgan.

“Hand me the cup and turn around?”

“One of us has to hold the cup,” Morgan says. “Do you want to hold yourself or the cup?”

Dylan blinks and then stares. “What?”

“You risk an overflow or a mess one-handed, and I’m not foolish enough to unbind your other hand.”

Dylan searches Morgan’s face for any sign that this might be some sort of perverse game, but his expression is as unreadably blank as ever.

“I think I can manage with one hand.”

“I don’t plan on cleaning up any messes from you today,” Morgan says firmly. “The cup is only sixteen ounces, and the adult male bladder typically holds over twenty—”

“Okay, okay,” Dylan groans, cutting him off. “I could have died without that particular biology lesson.”

Maybe the facts are only making him squeamish because they draw attention to how full his bladder is, the information registering in his mind as the equivalent to running water. 

Unperturbed, Morgan says, “Either I hold the cup and you aim yourself, or you hold the cup and I’ll—”

“I—you—_god, you’re tedious,_” Dylan breathes, exasperated. And then, “You hold the cup.”

“Very well.”

Morgan steps close and holds the cup low enough for Dylan to use.

Dylan stares at the man’s blue disposable glove, his fingers curled around the cup. When he raises his eyes to Morgan’s face, the man is looking pointedly away, attention steady on the wall across the room.

That strikes Dylan like a chisel through the heart. Morgan’s averted gaze has no place here. It’s an act of decency that has Dylan’s ears ringing with confusion. Morgan’s show of respect for Dylan’s privacy clashes too loudly with Dylan’s situation as a captive here.

Dylan pulls himself through his briefs and aims for the cup—except… fuck. He can’t do this. For some reason no matter how hard he urges himself to go, nothing comes. Dylan curses himself—he pees in public so often, so what’s so different about his? Sure, he makes certain he’s alone when he does it, but it’s not like he’s exceedingly bladder shy.

Quietly, eyes still on the wall, Morgan says, “We don’t have all day.”

The sheer awkwardness sends Dylan’s cheeks growing redder than they have all day.

Fuck. Well, this can’t be worse than whatever else is going to transpire today. 

This, right now, what Morgan’s giving him—it’s kindness. Morgan’s averted gaze is kindness, too. Maybe the last shred of kindness Dylan has left in his life.

Somehow, the thought calms him, and, staring hard at the floor, release comes.

When the sound of the filling cup stops, Morgan wordlessly takes the cup to the sink and dumps it like it’s any typical medical waste. The whole process is methodical, he lets the faucet run for a minute before throwing the cup away in the trashcan marked biohazard. He pulls his gloves off with a snap and tosses them after.

Dylan buttons his pants back up, which proves to be even more difficult with one hand, but he manages it. He watches as Morgan proceeds to wash his hands, which strikes Dylan as exceptionally silly.

“Really? You’re washing your hands?” Dylan can’t help taunting the other man. “Dude, you had gloves on.”

Morgan shakes the water off of his hands and says, “I’m going to call the guard in now.”

Panic strikes like lightning.

No—no. He can’t. He—this man—he can’t do this to Dylan. There has to be some way, some fucking way he can convince this almost-stranger to help him.

“Please.” Dylan’s voice breaks, any of his remaining pride sheds quickly. If he has to beg, he’ll beg—and he’ll do it with sincerity. Because he’s seriously freaked the fuck out, and begging is the only thing he hasn’t tried yet. “Please don’t leave me. Don’t let them take me.”

Rationally, Dylan knows he’s just clinging to something familiar, even though this man is nothing more than a stranger when it all comes down to it. There’s less familiarity between them than a store clerk and their regular customer.

Morgan is watching him intently.

It bolsters Dylan to continue. “Morgan,” the name feels odd on his tongue. Too intimate to be anything but a weapon right now, and Dylan’s sure Morgan sees right through it. “I’ll do anything, just… _please…_”

Morgan snorts, eyebrows shooting up. “Anything?”

Dylan swallows. Because… yeah, he would, right? “Anything you could have me do is better than dying.”

It’s true, or at least, it feels true to him right now, when the road ahead of him leads to certain death.

Morgan rolls his eyes, shakes his head. “The clients will love you.”

“What does that mean?” Dylan asks, frantic as Morgan turns to walk towards the door, presumably to let the guard in. All without so much as a goodbye.

Of course Morgan doesn’t answer.

“Wait!” Dylan calls. “Wait, wait, wait—I, I need to ask you something. Can I ask you one more thing?”

He blurts the request without much thought—but so far, answering questions is the one thing Morgan has acquiesced to most frequently. His question has the desired effect of giving Morgan pause.

Morgan turns on his heel, levels Dylan with a stare. “One more question. That’s all. Make it good.”

The words ring in Dylan’s head. _Make it good._

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

This man isn’t going to help him any more than he already has. Dylan can see it in the hardness of his dark eyes.

Morgan’s kindness has been spent. His stare isn’t cold or angry, just blank. Controlled.

Dylan can’t suffer through the blow of disappointment that will come with requesting help, only to be sorely rejected. 

Instead of begging further, Dylan sucks in a breath and asks, “Why the two-dollar bills?”

Morgan is visibly struck by this, eyes widening just fractionally, mouth going slack with some unreadable emotion. 

Dylan’s heart pounds wildly in his chest, anxiety building up with the knowledge that he’ll be leaving this room after Morgan’s reply.

“The first time, it was the only bill I had in my wallet. I don’t typically carry cash.” He pauses, meets Dylan’s gaze. “I could tell it bothered you when you saw that it was a two-dollar bill. After that, I carried them specifically for the occasions we might cross paths.”

Dylan has no idea what to make of that. He opens his mouth to speak, brows knit in confusion. He can’t find any words.

“You falter and stare every single time I hand you them,” Morgan supplies without prompting.

“But why?” Dylan manages, face still contorted in confusion. “Why go out of your way to give those to me?”

“To make you squirm,” Morgan answers simply, before continuing towards the door and opening it.

Dylan supposes that answers several questions.


	4. Chapter Four

The room Dylan’s led into after the exam room is more sophisticated than he expects. Though, what was he expecting? A dungeon with dim lighting and a leaky ceiling? 

This room is large, well lit. It gives Dylan the same vibes as a lobby, despite the rows of cages sprouting from the concrete floor. 

The cages are clean and unrusted, a reflective silver. Each cage is a seven foot high thing, far enough away from each other that those locked inside can’t touch each other through the bars. They’re embedded into the floor, bolted there, and only sized for one person each. The bars are thick, roughly the diameter of broom handles. They’re spaced so that a human body can’t squeeze through, but anyone can reach their arm through.

The worst part is how deep the room goes, how many blocks of five by five cages there are, all segmented by rows for guards to patrol. There must be fifty cages in this warehouse-like space. How many are full right now? Dylan would guess at least two dozen. What do they need this many live captives for?

The guard that took Dylan from the exam room didn’t bother restraining him with rope again. None of the other captives are tied within their cages either. Why would they be, with this many armed guards itching for some action?

Offset from the cages, near the door Dylan just came through, is a long, curving desk bearing several computers. The people stationed at the computers look more like receptionists than security detail or guards. Above and behind them, several monitors line the walls. Right now, those monitors bear a list of numbers, a scrolling marquee of data Dylan can’t decipher.

The setup is more jury-rigged than high-tech, but the sight of it still startles him.

The guard leading Dylan prods him hard in the back when he slows, head straining over his shoulder to squint at the monitors, the receptionists, the utter strangeness of this entire room. Dylan stumbles, but turns his gaze forward again. He’s led to the only empty cage in the front row of the room. It’s number four, A4 apparently, judging by the thick label painted onto the floor in front of the cage.

The guard opens the cage with an electronic lock and shoves Dylan inside. There’s no point in fighting, even though his hands aren’t bound anymore. There’s so many guards patrolling this room with large guns slung over their shoulders that he’d be dead before he could run three steps.

The cage door closes, clicks shut, surely locked. The guard escorting him leaves, and suddenly Dylan feels eerily alone despite the guards and staff in the room, despite the other captives in the cages beside him. 

No one is watching him, really. No one in particular. The staff at the desk are concerned with whatever’s on their computers, and the guards look undeniably bored. Somehow, that strikes Dylan as more unsettling than if they were patrolling with menace.

It’s all so… clinical. So organized. The relaxed boredom on the guards’ faces is akin to someone working a normal shift at their average day-job.

What the fuck is this place and how long has it been in operation?

Morgan wasn’t lying, there is a drain on the floor, right in the center of the cage. Dylan is thankful he doesn’t have to piss down the drain in front of the other captives.

The room is full of hushed speculation from the other abductees. The guards don’t seem to care about the panicked chatter, the murmured, impatient reassurances passed between cages from stranger to stranger. 

Not every captive looks like they got snatched off the streets because no one would miss them. Like Dylan. 

There are obvious college students adorned with letterman jackets. Girls dressed in waitress uniforms. People in now-rumpled suits. It’s a wide variety of people from different walks of life.

What do they all have in common? Probably that they were easy to snatch for some reason or another. Walking home drunk, making their way back to their dorms down a dark street. Dylan himself was harassed until he left the area in attempt to avoid the men, carelessly stomping off to a vacant area. Moreover, he was distracted, trying to convince himself Trevor wouldn’t run off with the money, trying to convince himself it hadn’t been a mistake to trust Trevor at all. 

Trevor…

Dylan’s so glad it’s not Trevor here right now. Goodness knows it would have been easy to nab a kid like him. Trevor would have broken already, if he were the one here. Dylan can manage. He’s been through too much to break over something like this.

Could this really be a human trafficking operation after all? It seems too clean for that. Too organized. Not nearly seedy enough. Some sort of human testing facility makes more sense, given the money that must be involved, given how elaborate the underground building is.

Dylan tries to tune out the muffled sobs, the occasional scream or plea from the people in the cages around him. He’s positive they don’t know any more than he does—and bearing witness to their pain will inspire enough empathy to break his resolve to remain headstrong.

What must he look like to the other captives? He’s still in the same dirty clothes he wore when he was abducted. The same clothes he wore yesterday, the day before that, a week before that. The only laundromat in walking distance from where he slept was being frequently patrolled by the local police, for the sole purpose of harassing people like Dylan off the premises. Because people like him bothered the normal citizens trying to wash their laundry.

The worn fabric of his shirt is sticky with sweat soaked and dried—the filth has never made his skin crawl like this place does.

As much as he tries, he can’t manage to tune out the occasional screams, the questions yelled at the guards until voices break. Until those same voices grow meek, screams fizzling out to sobs as they shrink to the cage floor and curl into their own little world.

The guards ignore all of this. Steadfast and stoic. Dylan saves his breath.

He keeps scanning the monitors on the wall for clues as to what might lie ahead, but is only able to decipher one monitor bearing an empty chart. It’s labeled with the cage numbers. Whatever that means, it can’t be good.

Eventually, Dylan sits down on the cool concrete floor, leans back against the bars of his cage, and waits.

An hour or so passes before there’s activity more notable than the occasional victim being brought into the room and shoved into an empty cage.

Eventually two men enter the room. The man Dylan encountered briefly when he first arrived, the one in the deep blue suit. He’s smiling. There’s a taller, lanky man with a heavy camera tailing him. The cameraman is the only person working in this place who doesn’t look professional. He’s disheveled, dressed in sweatpants, his hair tied back in a frizzy ponytail. 

The room falls into a hush as the captives’ attention catches on the two newcomers.

“Hello! My name is Sinclair and I’ll be your facilitator for today,” Blue Suit says, addressing the rows and rows of cages. 

The cameraman is silent, his camera blinking with a red light that surely means it’s recording.

Blue Suit claps his hands together once. “Row A, you’ll be the lucky ones performing this evening!”

Performing? What does that even mean?

Dylan’s eyes flit to the A4 painted in front of his cell.

The man—Sinclair, apparently—rocks on his heels. “It’s nice to meet you all. I’m afraid you’ll have to answer some questions for me. Basic things, no pressure.” 

The man’s smile is toothy, eager. From the front row, Dylan’s close enough to see he has a bit of a snaggle tooth, his top canines are long and prominent.

Silence radiates from the cages, a swift sense of foreboding falling over the room. No one wants to speak, to make any noise at all. Noise will single people out, and being singled out can’t possibly be a good thing right now.

“I always like to start with a handshake,” Sinclair says. “Fair enough?”

All five captives in row A, Dylan included, have the same reaction: no response, a bowed head.

Don’t stand out.

Unperturbed, the man who called himself Sinclair approaches the first cage, A1. Without a trace of caution, he sticks his hand through the bars and offers it to the girl inside.

The girl is standing in the center of the cage on wobbly legs. She seems so stunned by the man’s offered hand that she returns the handshake as if on impulse; compelled by some unseen force. The exchange seems like such a practiced response. The obligation of courtesy.

It seems cruel that compulsive manners would survive in a place like this

The scene disturbs Dylan more than anything he’s seen so far.

Sinclair moves onto the next cage. The man in A2 is middle-aged, dressed in a rumpled suit. As soon as Sinclair reaches through the bars, A2 lunges forward and bites Sinclair’s hand, gripping his wrist with clawing fingers. 

Sinclair makes an alarmed noise, hissing as he yanks his hand away. In an instant, he steps hurriedly out of range of the man, who smashes himself against the bars, hand clawing at the air inches from Sinclair’s face.

Sinclair’s recovery is instantaneous. He snorts, and then laughs.

“He’s a rabid one,” he says, looking over his shoulder to address the cameraman—no, the camera lens. “I’d wager we have quite a few medical professionals in the audience today—any of you care to volunteer to give me a tetanus shot?”

The man behind the camera rolls his eyes at the joke. He didn’t even jump when the man bit Sinclair.

Why are these people so relaxed in a room full of kidnapped victims? How can they conjure such mundane reactions to violence: a joke, an eye roll.

Dylan closes his eyes.

HOMELESS.  
PLEASE HELP.  
GOD BLESS.

An averted gaze. A sneer. A steadfast refusal to acknowledge his existence.

How is this any different than that?

It’s all an act of dehumanization strong enough to leave a bad taste in Dylan’s mouth, bile rising up in his throat, threatening to heave the water Morgan gave him into a splatter at his feet.

It’s not about the money. It’s about avoidance. How hard is it to smile? To nod at him in acknowledgment, even if they don’t have anything to spare?

People don’t know how to address horrible situations, do they? A flawed society leads to homeless youth stuck in a hole they can’t dig themselves out of, and the vast majority of the population does their best to shove the unsavory truth from their minds. Ignore it. Move on, lest they be made too upset by the knowledge. And now—a room full of victims and a promise of violence, and the way these _employees_ deal with that is morbid humor, or boredom.

An averted gaze. A sneer. A joke. An eyeroll.

That’s all Dylan’s ever been. All his life, for as long as he can remember.

It may be all he ever amounts to. He hasn’t ever quite managed to find a way to feel human in the eyes of others, not yet. Not to his parents, or his peers, or the people who pass him by with only a brief glance at his sign. And he certainly isn’t going to find humanity in this place.

Whatever this place is, it’s normal to those operating it. Normal enough to laugh at a captive’s attempt to retaliate; the mirth of a cat at the sight of a squirming mouse. 

One thing’s certain: this human trafficking operation has been going on for a long time. 

An audience. Sinclair had said he wagers there are a few doctors in the audience.

Dylan eyes the man holding the camera.

Sinclair had claimed that row A would be the lucky ones performing this evening. 

An audience.  
A camera.  
A performance.

Those are Dylan’s only clues to mentally prepare himself for whatever comes next. They’re pieces that don’t fit together with the people in cages. The human trafficking network. No crime ring wants to be exposed by performances and audiences and recordings on a camera.

What the hell is going on here?

The girl in the third cage refuses to acknowledge Sinclair. She doesn’t even look up at the man’s offered hand—but Dylan does.

He stares outright. Rectangular indentations crest on Sinclair’s skin by his thumb. Bite marks. Puncture wounds. The bite from the man in cage A2 will certainly inspire bruising later on.

When A3 doesn’t budge, Sinclair withdraws his hand. 

“Well then,” Sinclair huffs, “I bet this one isn’t so quiet with a little persuasion.”

This makes A3 react—her gaze snaps up to the man smirking outside her cage.

It’s then Dylan notices something out of the corner of his eye—the monitors on the front wall of the room, the ones with the cage’s labels on them. The number zero under each label has been going up. He’s been too distracted by Sinclair to realize sooner.

Only the numbers belonging to captive’s A1 through A3 have changed so far, rapidly increasing on the screens. The numbers are in the thousands right now.

A3’s number is spiking fast, climbing to fifteen-thousand before Dylan’s attention is snapped away.

Sinclair is standing in front of Dylan’s cage now.

A4.

The camera is trained on him.

Just as he did for the past three cages, Sinclair reaches through the bars to offer Dylan his hand. 

Dylan stares. Rises to his feet. Stares some more—not at the man’s hand, but at his face, eyes roving over it. Memorizing it, like he always tries to memorize the blur of faces of the kids who come around to harass him as he collects money from passing cars.

By the time Sinclair shrugs and slips his hand back out of the cage without comment, Dylan is sure he could pick the man out of a police lineup. White-blond hair cropped short and slicked back off his forehead. Pale eyes, vaguely sun-tanned white skin. His lean build is stronger than Dylan expects.

Dylan himself is a few inches shorter, though perhaps stronger from all the muscle he’s built hauling his heavy backpack everywhere. He guesses that Sinclair is about six feet tall, which makes the cameraman at least three inches over that.

Sinclair doesn’t even offer a comment about Dylan to the camera. Nothing to say. As if Dylan is the most boring of them all, Sinclair simply moves on to cage A5.

Good. Dylan won’t be these people’s plaything. Won’t be their source of amusement or ridicule.

Still, Dylan’s heart pounds in his chest, quick and unbidden. He hates it. Hates that these people can elicit any sort of reaction from him. He breathes, tries to calm down, to stare into the distance and shut out the world around him.

This is a mistake.

On the wall, on the monitor labeled A4, the number is rising. It hits a thousand. Two thousand. The number escalates right before Dylan’s eyes.

Dylan narrows his gaze at the offensive number. It’s nowhere near as high as some of the other cage’s numbers. In fact, though Dylan hadn’t been paying attention to A5’s reaction to Sinclair’s handshake, A5 seems to have triggered his own number to ascend rapidly.

A5’s number passes Dylan’s own in seconds.

What the fuck do those numbers even mean?

A price?

Surely a price.

It has to be.

Dylan grits his teeth and rolls his shoulders, trying to shake the thought from his head.

No. Those numbers can’t be prices, because if they were… it would mean…

It would mean people are bidding on them.

No.

Fucking _no_.

But even as Dylan can feel his entire body rejecting the notion viscerally with a cold sweat, some more pieces click into place.

An audience.  
A camera.  
A performance.  
A price.

The only piece Dylan can’t find a match for is the performance. What does that mean? Why would that require bidding?

A3’s number is over fifty thousand now. It can’t be money. The number’s too high.

Dylan’s brain halts, catches on that thought.

The price of a human life. What is it worth?

Dylan shuts his eyes again, taken back to the first time he stood frowning and disheveled on a street corner, sign in hand.

HOMELESS.  
PLEASE HELP.

The first time he got handed money from a car window it was a pile of sticky nickels and dimes from someone’s cup holder. He had stared at the grimey coins in his palms. Counted it. Thirty-five cents.

At the time, he had grit his teeth and thought the same thing he’s thinking now: what is the price of a human life? How much is it worth?

Do the people driving by in their cars with their fancy four-dollar coffees know that he’s halfway to starvation? Do they know it took him two days without food to work up the courage to even write the sign?

HOMELESS.  
PLEASE HELP.  
GOD BLESS.

It was two more days before he finally snuffed out enough of his pride to stand on the corner, holding that sign.

Sinclair is back at cage A1 now, speaking to the captive inside. Asking questions. An interview.

A camera.  
An audience.  
A performance.  
An interview.  
A price.

As Sinclair speaks to A1, Dylan plugs his ears with his fingers until all he can hear is the muffled hum of his own breath and the thud of his own heart. He won’t let this affect him. Won’t be shaken by whatever questions Sinclair is firing at them.

He’s not going to participate in whatever this game is.

Dylan can’t manage to force his eyes shut, instead leaving them glued to the monitors. Numbers rise in correlation with who the camera is trained on.

Then Sinclair is in front of A3’s cage, and Dylan can’t help watching the exchange between him and the girl in A3. The girl is curled up on the floor now, knees tucked under her chin, arms round tight around her legs. Her long artificially silver hair is strewn messily over her face. Her eyes might as well be locked with deadbolts they’re shut so tight.

Her mouth doesn’t open. She’s ignoring Sinclair.

Dylan wouldn’t be surprised if she started rocking back and forth or sobbing. Dark, flaking mascara is smeared over her cheeks. Maybe she doesn’t have any tears left to cry.

The sight has enough strength to tug on Dylan’s heartstrings. This girl is fighting hard to keep intact whatever small part of her hasn’t broken yet.

On the screens, her number is only shooting up. If it is a price, she’s expensive. Over one-hundred thousand now. None of the other numbers come close.

Is it A3’s lack of response that’s making her number rise, or is it her unstable demeanor?

When Sinclair moves in front of Dylan’s cage expectantly, Dylan keeps his fingers in his ears. Stares ahead. Refuses to give this man anything.

This only serves to make his number on the monitors skyrocket.

What?

What the fuck? He’s not doing anything. 

His number is the highest now besides A3.

Startled, Dylan unplugs his ears and fixes the man outside his cage with an incredulous glare.

A glare that asks: _what the hell is happening?_

Sinclair’s only response is raised eyebrows.

Dylan can’t help it, he spits, “What’s with the monitors? The numbers? Why is my number going up?”

Sinclair chuckles. “My, my. You’re the first to point out the monitors.”

Dylan tips his head up, peers down his nose at him. “Well?”

“That, my friend,” he half turns to gesture at the screens. The camera lens follows. “Is your worth.”

His worth.

The price of a human life.

He was right. They are being bought—no, auctioned. Why? For what? Sex? Slavery? Organ harvesting? Illegal medical testing?

“You look shocked,” Sinclair practically purrs. “Don’t worry, you’re in good hands. Your worth is being determined by some of the most powerful people in the world—so you can rest assured that the price will be accurate.”

A camera.  
An audience.  
An auction.  
An interview.  
A price.

All that’s left is… a performance. What does that mean? How does that correlate to any of the other things? Dylan can’t wrap his head around it. How could sex, slavery, or organ harvesting result in a _performance?_ Sinclair had definitely said there would be a performance.

Dylan can’t help but think about Chuck, one of the old men he used to share an underpass with during his first few months of homelessness. Chuck would be quick to call this whole nightmare Dylan’s in right now a government conspiracy. Dylan feels just as paranoid as Chuck right now.

What is this, some sort of secret government psychological testing facility? What will become of them after?

“We’ll start simple,” Sinclair says, staunching Dylan’s frantic flood of thought. “What’s your favorite color?”

“Fuck you,” Dylan snaps on pure impulse. Shit. He hadn’t wanted to play this fucking game.

Sinclair hums. “I’ve never seen that one on a crayon before.”

Dylan grits his teeth hard to force a retort back down his throat. 

Even the mention of something like a crayon strikes Dylan as obscene in this situation. Does Sinclair have children? Certainly he must have a family of some sort—cousins, siblings, parents. Do they know he’s involved in something as sinister as human trafficking? Does he have a family that’s none the wiser to his whereabouts at this very moment? 

Sinclair hums thoughtfully. “Okay, how about your full name? Surely you know the answer to that one.”

Dylan crosses his arms over his chest, guarded. “No.”

His insolence earns a huff of reluctant amusement from Sinclair, who then reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a stack of IDs.

Fuck. Dylan completely forgot to check his pockets for his wallet. Instinctually, he pats for it in the zippered cargo pocket on his left leg—sure enough, the pocket is empty. When had they taken it? The only time he was unconscious for any length of time was while being transported in the trunk of that car. Had his abductors opened the trunk at some point and rifled through his pockets?

The thought makes him sick. Makes him feel betrayed by his own body. He shouldn’t have been able to sleep through something like that.

Dylan curses himself for keeping his expired ID in the first place. He doesn’t want these people to know his name. He should have gotten rid of the ID a long time ago—why keep an identity that has no value? An identity not even valuable to the society that assigned it to him?

It was a stubborn act of rebellion to keep his expired ID these past few years living on the streets. When he managed to die from hypothermia or starvation, Dylan wanted his body properly identified. He wanted his parents to know that they killed him.

Sinclair stops shuffling through the IDs and says, “Ah, this one looks like you. Dylan Miller, yes? Twenty-three years old, blond hair, green eyes, Five-ten, one-hundred sixty three pounds?”

A snarl manages to fight past Dylan’s clenched teeth. He wants to rip his name out of this man’s mouth.

Without pause, Sinclair asks, point blank, “Are you a virgin, Dylan?”

That question might as well have been a slap to the face, with how well it blindsided Dylan.

He balks. Scoffs. Wants to lash out with something scathing, but his mind is blank with white hot rage. 

“No,” Dylan grinds out, when he manages to unlock his jaw. It’s a lie, but he hopes there’s enough blatant loathing behind his words that his reply comes across as blunt and not deceptive. 

Of course he’s a virgin, he spent his whole life under the rule of his overbearing parents. He barely attended school, skipping class whenever his parents verbally assaulted him so badly the night before that he couldn’t bear to face a classroom full of peers—because doing so would imply he deserved to be there. And he didn’t. He was worthless, why even bother? His parents prompted him with that question often and for as long as he can remember. Why even bother?

He never made friends. There wasn’t a single time in his life he could imagine having the self-esteem to maintain something resembling friendship.

The only thing he could manage to care about on a daily basis growing up was how to minimize the disapproval and hatred of his parents. It was practically obsession.

The thought of sex and relationships were never on his mind.

His parents had threatened to kick him out of their home and their lives since he was well under ten years old. He had no way of knowing at that age that they couldn’t, that it would be blatant child abuse. He believed it. The result was a deep fear of being discarded, a perpetual lack of any sense of safety and security. And then, later, after his parent’s threats became a reality, his priorities turned to surviving with no home, no food, no water, nothing to keep him warm when the sun faded from the sky.

Dylan’s roil of emotion focuses in on Sinclair. How dare this man ask him if he’s a virgin, as if that information has any bearing on who he is or what he’s been through? 

“Why? Why does it matter?” Dylan spits. “Would it make me more valuable if I was a virgin?”

Sinclair simply smiles in response to Dylan’s snarled question. “Not as much as you would think—it turns out there are many more interesting firsts our clients would like for you all to endure.”

It’s not until Dylan has to force his body to inhale that he realizes he stopped breathing.

“So, not a virgin,” Sinclair muses, looking Dylan up and down thoughtfully. The camera follows Sinclair’s gaze up and down Dylan’s body. “No, I don’t suppose you are.” 

Dylan feels bare in front of the camera. He can’t hide himself. Can’t hide the tense muscles in his crossed arms. Can’t hide his unwashed hair, tied in a sloppy bun behind his head. He wastes precious water to shave his face every morning, but by now it might be budding with pale stubble. 

He’s not unattractive. He knows that. Many people honking their horns and propositioning him on the street have told him so.

It’s a curse, when all he’s trying to do is survive without drawing any attention to himself at all.

The camera is drawing too much attention now. This interview. Dylan’s answers. All of it. The numbers on his monitor are skyrocketing. He’s well above the others now, but still nowhere near catching up to the girl in cage A3.

“What would you say your pain tolerance is?” Sinclair asks, a pinch of humor lacing his voice.

Dylan wrinkles his nose, disgusted by the implications that rise to the surface of that question. There’s no doubt in his mind now that this operation is sex motivated. 

Unable to muzzle himself, Dylan shoots back, glare fixed low and seething on Sinclair, “What’s yours?”

Sinclair doesn’t answer, he just smiles wolfishly and exchanges a glance with the cameraman, whose gaze flits nervously to the floor.

_What the fuck?_

Dylan’s nothing more than a growling dog choking itself on its own chain in an effort to get at an intruder’s throat. This is what this place, this man, has reduced him to.

Unbidden, Dylan’s thoughts shift gears to Morgan. How did a man like him end up in a place like this? Why? He had given Dylan basic respect and as much privacy as his job would allow. Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Morgan was Dylan’s chance. His one fucking chance to make it out of this place. And he let it slip through his fingers. He thought that he had done all he could, that he had already pushed Morgan’s limits to depletion. But he should have pushed harder. Should have risked everything for it. 

Not a single other person in this place has shown any inkling that they might have mercy on their victims. Certainly not Sinclair.

“What do you do for a living?” Sinclair asks, sounding as if he’d rather be examining his fingernails. He’s just going through the motions, now, isn’t he? This is scripted, to some extent, it must be.

Dylan can’t even bother lying. He snorts, staring dead into the camera lens, “I beg strangers for money.” 

Sinclair frowns. “So... like a prostitute?” 

“No,” Dylan says, offering no further explanation.

Sinclair twists and looks at Dylan’s rising numbers on the monitors. Shakes his head. Sighs. “The audience always likes the difficult ones.”

Without another glance at Dylan, Sinclair moves on to the last cage.

Dylan can’t take his eyes off the screen labeled A4. The person in A5 is answering questions now, but Dylan can’t manage to gather any word being said through his racing thoughts. All he registers is that it’s a completely different set of questions than he was asked.

A5 is ignoring every single one of Sinclair’s questions—but not unresponsively as A3 did. Instead, A5 is on his knees, begging and pleading.

“Alright,” Sinclair says when he can’t manage to get a sensical reply out of the man. “sixty more seconds and we’ll be closing bids.”

When Sinclair pushes up his sleeve, there’s an ornate watch adorning his wrist, the kind that litter pawn shops. He stares at his watch until the numbers on the monitors halt.

“Predictable,” Sinclair says with an exhausted sort of humor. He taps the face of his watch once and turns his attention back to the cages. “You’ll be going out for your performances one at a time. Highest bid first. Ten minutes until showtime.”

With a snap of his fingers, Sinclair turns on his heel and saunters out of a door beneath the monitors. The cameraman follows.

An audience.   
A camera.  
An interview.  
An auction.  
A performance.  
A price.

Judging by the bids on the monitors, Dylan is going to be the second most expensive act. 

The poor girl sobbing in cage A3, composure finally broken, is going first.


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is short but the next one is longer I promise :)

True to Sinclair’s word, ten minutes later the guards advance on cage A3. The girl’s sweat-soaked, unruly hair falls around her face as she’s dragged from the cage. 

For the first time since Dylan entered the room, she speaks.

“No, no, no no no—_please_. Help, someone help!” The girl twists to fix pleading eyes on the other cages, not the guards.

It’s unknowingly cruel.

Dylan flinches. He can’t help her. All he can do is grip the bars of his cage and scream for the guards to let her go. So he does.

The girl makes eye-contact with Dylan, tears spilling down her face. She does her best to resist, her strength limited by the size of the guards, who have ample muscle and height on her. She doesn’t stand a chance.

Dylan watches her shoes skid on the concrete floor as she tries to anchor herself in place. No good. She’s uprooted like a plant in soft soil. One of the guards lifts her, kicking and flailing, to speed up the process. 

They exit with the girl through the same door Sinclair left through ten minutes ago. The heavy steel door snaps shut behind them, cutting off the girl’s screams.

Dylan sinks to the floor of his cage, knuckles white around the bars. His heart slams behind his ribs like a dog scratching at a closed door. Dylan presses one palm against his chest, trying to will his heartbeat calm. Panicking won’t get him anywhere.

The man in cage A1 shouts several questions at the remaining guards. _What are we doing here? Where did you take her?_

The guards don’t even spare the man a glance. They continue patrolling the rows of cages with pure boredom etched in their expressions. 

Minutes pass. Dylan closes his eyes, tries to rein in a sense of time. 

He often didn’t have a way to tell time while living on the street, not after his cheap watch died sometime in that first year. The intensity of the sun was usually the only indication, and even that was unreliable on cloudy days. Old man Chuck insisted anyone could tell the time by the position of the sun in the sky; he was even able to tell which way was north and south without any thought at all. Dylan never understood it.

Mostly, Dylan would pass excruciating hours by counting the cars like sheep. He’d try to focus on the muffled song lyrics blasting from radios. He’d study the people inside the cars, watch them.

He can’t bring himself to look at his fellow captives. They’re all fucked, aren’t they? At least Dylan’s the next one that will be heading into whatever unknown hell awaits them all. That way he won’t have to bear the weight of watching another victim scream and plead as they’re dragged away.

The not knowing is killing him. It’s almost a relief that he’s next. That mix of anticipation and anxiety in his chest is like acid—at least if he knows what he’s in for he can cope with it mentally. Right now, he’s not coping well at all.

Well over an hour passes before the guards that took A3 return. Maybe two hours. Maybe five.

A3 does not return with them.

Dylan’s limbs buzz with sudden numbness, like morning frost forming beneath his skin.

He had hoped the girl from cage A3 would come back with the guards. He had hoped seeing her state, hell, _seeing her at all,_ would give him some sort of indication of what comes next.

Except… there is an indication of what happened—the evidence is on the guards.

The blue fabric of their uniforms is concave in places, shirts heavy with a thick wetness that causes the fabric to cling to their skin.

Dark liquid.

Red.

Blood?

A3’s blood?

Dylan takes a deep breath and tries not to jump to conclusions.

A3… she’s not dead. Can’t be. That can’t be her fate. Why pay hundreds of thousands of dollars only to kill the person being bid on?

It doesn’t make sense.

This is some sort of human trafficking operation. Has to be. Dylan’s going to meet the highest bidder—and be traded over as some sort of pet to a filthy rich individual—right?

A3 must have been bloodied by the guards because she put up a fight.

Fuck. She couldn’t have been much over five feet tall.

As the guards approach, it’s impossible to deny that the amount of still-wet blood coating their uniforms is too much to belong to a broken nose or a bloody lip. It’s more blood than a struggle could have caused.

Dylan clenches his teeth as the guards make straight for his cage. A4. They unlock it with the swipe of a keycard and reach for him.

Some of the blood on the guard’s uniforms is crusted, dried as if shed in the first few minutes of A3’s disappearance through those doors.

Dylan doesn’t fight it. He steps out of the cage willingly before the guards grab him. One guard places a firm grip on the back of his neck and guides him towards the same door A3 was taken through.

The employee at some of the computers near the wall doesn’t even look up as Dylan passes. Dylan tries to get a look at her computer monitor, but all he sees is a complicated program with many buttons and sliders.

The door unlocks with a buzz. A wide hallway. Dark maroon paint on the walls. Shiny, black tile. Expensive. The dull yellow lights that line the hallway are encased in intricate gold fixtures. Their steps click too-loud against the tiled floor. The atmosphere is almost sultry, like a dimly lit music lounge.

The doors that line the hallway are a heavy metallic black with back-lit electronic keypads sure to belong to a locking mechanism.

Something is wrong.

Very wrong.

Dylan should have known by the clean cages. The sophisticated setup of monitors. The mention of affluent bidders.

Whatever Dylan’s about to face has to be some sort of game played only by the elite.

There’s a set of double doors at the end of the hallway. Not even the faintest hint of echoed noise leaks through the doors.

There’s no use speculating anymore. No use spending the slow crawl up the first hill of a roller coaster wondering what the drop will be like. All he can do now is brace for it. Endure. Pray he comes out the other end shaken but alive.

Dylan’s pushed straight through the cherry-oak double doors.

The first thing that hits him is the blind of studio lights all positioned towards a heavy wooden chair centered in front of the cinderblock wall. Then there’s the rest of the room, wide and concrete. Drains on the floor again, cracked and stained. Nothing like the lavishness of the hallway outside. 

The doors bolt shut behind him, the latch clicking into place loud and sinister.

Dylan averts his gaze to the floor, eyes watering under the lights as he’s shoved towards the chair. There are stains on the concrete pooling around the drain. The russet brown of a coffee ring on parchment. 

Torn and stained red velvet curtains hang behind him on the wall, as if framing the chair. The chair itself is surrounded by expensive camera equipment.

The further he’s urged forward, the less the light shrouds his vision. Just beyond the glare of the studio lights, he can see them—the monitors surrounding the set up. The wires and computers. The lenses. 

Hundreds of lines of text fly by in a rapid scroll on one of the monitors. Usernames. Thousands. More, maybe. Dylan can decipher the format but the text is too small for him to read. A livestream chat?

An audience?

They’re all watching Dylan through the cameras as if he’s just been placed on a pedestal.

No, not a pedestal.

A stage.


	6. Chapter Six

The guards usher Dylan forward into the thick wooden chair. It’s bolted right to the concrete floor, as if anticipating its occupant’s impending struggle. 

It’s only when he’s shoved down into the seat, rough rope wrangled until both his arms are tied to each arm of the chair, that Dylan is overwhelmed by an impulse to struggle. The bucking is futile under the strength of the two guards, his efforts too late.

The sight that greets him when the guards retreat from his vision is enough to startle him into stillness. The same frizzy-haired cameraman from the cage room, pulling up the corner of his tee-shirt to wipe a splattering of red liquid off one of the many cameras stationed around the chair. 

Dylan can’t deny it anymore, it has to be blood.

Beside the man, a long metal tray filled with an array of tools—knives, pliers, drills, hammers, saws.

The sight of the tools reminds Dylan impossibly of his paternal grandfather who ran a flooring installation business. Some of Dylan’s only good memories involve long hours of helping his grandfather complete jobs. On his knees tearing up old carpet and then the even older wooden floor beneath. Prying nails from walls. Cutting new boards to size with a miter saw. 

His grandfather was the only one who didn’t treat Dylan like he was a total waste of air. After he passed away, Dylan’s father sold his flooring company. 

Dylan squeezes his eyes shut long enough to push the thoughts away.

He needs to focus. 

The monitor displaying the livestream chat keeps scrolling. If he’s right about what it is, there are so many people out there waiting for whatever comes next. 

Defeat bleeds through Dylan's veins like arctic water. The only exit is bolted shut. Locked electronically on top of that. There’s really no escape from this place, not underground in this maze of hallways and locked doors and rooms with no windows.

The guards force his calves against the chair legs, and metal cuffs snap down over his ankles, locking his legs to the chair. Dylan’s body struggles again on its own accord, even as he mentally wills it not to. His wrists burn against the rope as he aggressively tries to tug his limbs free. His body slams back and forth in the chair with what little give the restraints have, but the chair is bolted to the floor. Of course it doesn’t budge.

Beyond the lights and the cameras, the monitors display the camera feeds from different angles. His body from every angle. A close-up on his face.

What the fuck.

_What the fuck is this place?_

Dylan must have yelled this out loud, because Sinclair’s voice fills the room.

“This, my dear friend, is the Red Room Collaborative.” Sinclair saunters over to Dylan from somewhere stage right. His voice gains volume with every syllable, until he’s practically shouting with pride. The chat mirrors his devotion, feed scrolling faster.

He won’t find sympathy from a single viewer in the so-called audience.

“We all wish to extend you a very warm welcome.”

“What is this?” Dylan barks. “Some sort of livestream on the darkweb?”

Sinclair laughs, amusement short but genuine. “A livestream, yes. A very exclusive, private one.” He pauses to pat Dylan’s cheek. “But no, there’s no such thing as streaming on the darkweb. The encryption doesn’t allow for that kind of bandwidth.”

Dylan jerks away from the touch. “People are watching this?”

There’s no real audience here. Just the two guards settling next to the door, the cameraman and Sinclair. Dylan’s not asking about them. He’s asking about the people in the livestream chat watching from home.

“Yes?” Sinclair answers slowly, as if he thinks Dylan’s having a rough time processing information right now. He loops behind Dylan and leans down to wave at the camera lens. “Say hello, Dylan!”

Dylan doesn’t say hello. 

Why should he?

There won’t be any applause for him. For whatever sacrifice he’s about to make on this makeshift stage.

Dylan’s stomach churns.

Whatever audience is out there, they’re hiding behind the security of the internet, behind anonymous usernames. Concealing their identities.

Meanwhile, Dylan is as bare as he comes, fully clothed but feeling naked, locked to the chair and gawked at by these people. Which camera feed can they see? All of them? One of them at a time? Who chooses?

Dylan wants to peel the viewer’s anonymity away, like extracting a half-formed larva from its cocoon. Shed their screens to expose the delicate skin beneath, unready to face the world.

“Our second guest tonight will be Dylan Miller,” Sinclair says, addressing a camera, the audience, like Dylan is more show dog than human. Sinclair whips out Dylan’s photo ID again. “In case you’ve forgotten, he’s twenty-three years old, five-ten, and one-hundred sixty three pounds.”

The chat has settled now, like the previews have ended and the movie is now rolling. The room is so quiet except for the hum of computer and camera equipment. It’s wrong, so wrong, that there are likely hundreds of people watching him right now on the livestream. He should be able to hear the creek of their computer chairs, the clack of their keyboards, the heft of their breath.

“From what we’ve been able to gather,” Sinclair continues, “He used to work at a grocery store. But now he spends his time sleeping on park benches and begging hard-working strangers for money.”

The chat speeds at this information.

Dylan seethes. Sinclair said the _clients_ were all wealthy and influential. They must see someone homeless and wanting like Dylan as some sort of alien specimen. Or worse, an insect so common it’s not even worth pinning and displaying.

Sinclair snorts. “Dylan here is obviously a very high achiever.”

The chat speeds further at the palpable sarcasm. 

Dylan clenches his teeth so hard his gums ache. He’s seconds away from lashing out, from barking, rabid and foaming on his leash. 

He can’t. He can’t give these fuckers the satisfaction.

“He was found by our scrapers loitering outside a department store after sunset. Exciting, huh?” Sinclair is stacking this information expertly, piece by piece to entice the audience into rapt attention. A buffet of narrative to be immersed in.

Dylan balls his fists, wrists straining at the rope. His fingernails dig painful red crescents into his palms.

“Any questions for our ex-grocery store clerk turned worthless panhandler?” Sinclair asks, slyly. There’s a sinister, knowing edge as he slips that word in there. Worthless. As if Sinclair knows damn well that every single person watching this will agree with him wholeheartedly. 

“_Worthless?_” Dylan spits, voice loud enough that it echoes in the room’s pristine acoustics. “_Worthless?_ Yeah fucking right. Did you see how much they bid on me? Over fifty thousand dollars!”

The room is quiet for several moments. 

Then Sinclair laughs, shrugs affably, and swivels to address the camera. “Some people don’t know pocket change when they see it.”

Another surge of activity in the chat.

Dylan growls this time, in frustration, in a loss for words, yanking his limbs in the restraints again. Fruitlessly. So, so, fruitlessly.

“Again, any questions for our pocket-change boy?” Sinclar asks. “Perhaps something other than a question? Something you’d like done to him?”

Dylan swallows, his tongue like sandpaper.

There’s nothing Sinclair won’t allow to be done to him, is there?

With the amount of money these people are willing to spend… anything’s on the table.

There’s a slowing of activity in the chat. A shifting.

Frantically, Dylan twists around, trying to get a better look at his surroundings.

He shrinks slightly when he sees it. Recoils. There’s a large monitor behind him, to his left. A rapidly changing number displays on the screen. A dollar amount. They’re bidding—the audience is bidding. 

Black screen, white numbers. It’s in the thousands now, and quickly climbing. What’s worse are all the other monitors around him. Footage. Camera footage. Live camera footage of Dylan. Close ups on his face, his hands, his arms, various angles of every part of him. Even a camera trained on his shoes.

The number jumps higher when horror crosses Dylan’s face upon seeing the dollar amount.

They’re bidding. Actively. Right now. And any time he shows the slightest hint of emotion, the bidding spikes eagerly. 

They aren’t buying him, are they? They aren’t bidding to make him some sort of sex slave. They aren’t bidding to buy his kidneys or his eyes or whatever other organ they can strip from him like used car parts.

Panic rises in Dylan’s chest like bile. He had almost felt comforted with the thought of being sold into sex work, because at least that would mean he would come out of this alive. At least then there would be a chance to free himself, somehow. As long as he’s alive, everything will be okay. That’s what he’s been telling himself.

But there was blood on the guard’s clothes. And still no sign of the girl in cage A3, who must have sat in this chair or one like it right before this.

What are they going to do to him? Anything? Anything they’re willing to pay for?

Dylan doesn’t have to wonder for long, because a buzzer sounds and a number on the screen rolls to a halt.

Eight-thousand dollars. 

A string of words appears under the number. Dylan reads over it so quickly that he has to scan the sentence several times before he comprehends it.

_Take down his hair._

What?

The confusion only has moments to overtake him before Sinclair bounces on his feet and produces a knife from a holster on his belt.

“Ooh, fun,” Sinclair brandishes the medium size blade and steps slowly towards Dylan, like a predator stalking prey. When he gets close, he stands beside Dylan, making sure not to obscure the center camera’s view.

Dylan leans away instinctually, eyes wide.

Sinclair smiles and turns the blade in his hand, inches from Dylan’s face. Dylan can see his own reflection in the silver metal. 

Slowly, Sinclair presses the flat of the blade to Dylan’s face and drags it in a flat, cool slide down his cheek. The heat and perspiration from Dylan’s face fogs up the reflective surface.

Sinclair pivots the knife, places the point close to Dylan’s eyelid—and then, just as Dylan’s chest starts heaving with fear, he moves the knife behind Dylan and cuts away the band holding Dylan’s hair in a bun above his head.

Dylan’s messy blond hair spills down his neck. 

Morgan, the doctor, the man with the two dollar bills—the only person in this place to show him a scrap of humanity—he was the last person to touch Dylan’s hair, tying it back into place after he checked it for lice in the exam room.

Dylan squeezes his eyes shut and sees Morgan’s stern face in his memory. The recollection is too sharp, too bright, too unwanted. Why? Why is he thinking of that man now? He’s gone. Dylan left him in that exam room without trying hard enough to beg him for help. The chance is gone. It’s over. Done with. There’s no one to help him now.

Sinclair keeps flicking his gaze from Dylan’s face to his heaving chest, as if to admire his handiwork. The knife has the desired affect.

They want him afraid, don’t they?

They want him terrified and screaming.

They want to break him. Physically. Mentally.

He won’t let them.

It was just a hair tie. They just cut the hair tie. That’s all.

Dylan’s face heats, embarrassed by how unbrushed his hair is. He can’t remember the last time he bought a gym membership to wash it properly.

He glances back up at the monitor. Eight-thousand nine-hundred and eighty five dollars. Someone just paid eight thousand dollars to… what? See Dylan with his hair down?

That… that shouldn’t disturb him as much as it does. He hates that he can feel the knowledge crawling beneath his skin like a sack of hatching spiders.

Sinclair catches Dylan staring at the number above his head and laughs. He fists Dylan’s loose hair suddenly, yanking his head back.

Close to Dylan’s ear, Sinclair hisses, voice dropping its cheerful tone to something strictly cruel, “Don’t feel so special. Like I said, pocket change.”

The number resets to zero. The screen clears of the command: _Take down his hair_. Dylan watches his own disgruntled face in the monitors, flushed red, Sinclair’s hand fisted in his hair.

Morgan had touched his hair in the exam room, gently and methodically combing through it with gloved fingers, eliciting a unwarranted prickle of pleasure across Dylan’s scalp.

Sinclair’s grip in his hair only makes his eyes water at the sharp pain.

Seeing his own pained face and red cheeks displayed on the monitors is more humiliating than anything else has been up until this point.

“Is this,” Dylan asks, trying to level his breath, “Some sort of kink thing?”

Sinclair laughs, shooting a knowing glance at the camera lens.

“Why don’t you just—” Dylan’s question is cut off by another buzzer. He looks up again. There’s a higher number on the screen now, just over twelve-thousand. Another round of bidding has stopped. The next command appears. 

_Pliers. Give him a scar right on top._

Sinclair releases his hair.

Dylan frowns deeply at the request. No matter how many times over he searches the words, he can’t make full sense of them. But there’s no doubt they mean impending pain.

Sinclair chuckles darkly at Dylan’s frantic look. “Poor thing, you must not understand. But don’t worry, we’re all well acquainted here. We speak each other’s language.” 

This time when Sinclair slips his hand into Dylan’s hair, it’s to brush it gently out of his face. A mockery of a lover’s touch. Dylan can only flinch away so far before he’s forced to bear the caress. 

“You’ll never find a group of people who understand each other more than the Red Room Collaborative. I know just what to do.”

The frazzled cameraman picks up the pliers off the tray and hands them to Sinclair through all the equipment surrounding the makeshift stage. For the first time, Dylan notices that the cameraman is missing a finger on each of his hands. 

Are the missing digits a sign of the hazards of this job?

Did the other staff do that to him, or did one of the victims manage to fight back?

Dylan’s skin crawls with a full infestation of spider legs beneath his skin now.

What happened to the girl from cage A3? Did she have to go through this same bidding process? Probably. Obviously. Where is she now? Where is she?

Dead. That’s what his common sense screams at him. Dead. He would cover his ears and pretend not to hear his own thoughts if he could.

Sinclair rolls up the short sleeve on Dylan’s left arm.

Dylan jerks away, tilts his head back. He must look like a child trying to squirm away from the impending needle of a vaccination. 

Looking up is a mistake. Monitors overhead show a zoomed shot of Sinclair’s thumb stroking Dylan’s skin.

Dylan’s skin prickles under Sinclair’s smooth caress. What is this livestream for? Some sort of torture fetish?

Cold metal brushes Dylan’s skin next. He jerks, attention shooting to Sinclair and his hand. Pliers. The head of the pliers are resting against Dylan’s upper arm, jaws open.

The rubber grip is delicately spread in Sinclair’s hand—and then, as if signaled by Dylan’s hitched breath, Sinclair’s hand snaps closed, and so do the pliers.

Thick pain pools viciously in Dylan’s arm as the metal clamps hard on a chunk of his flesh. Dylan can only jerk away so far in the confines of the chair. It’s futile, any attempt to pull away only tightens the grip of the pliers impossibly. 

Tears spring into Dylan’s eyes at the rush of pain. Another sudden squeeze from Sinclair. A vague twist of his wrist. The shock of pain is excruciating. Dylan’s eyes widen in horror at how thin the clamps are pressing his skin, flattening it to nothing.

Sinclair’s fist strains on the handles of the pliers, his knuckles white with effort. Dylan’s sun soaked skin is already pooling an angry red all down his upper arm—but beneath the pliers, the blackberry red of burst blood vessels grows darker by the second. Blood rising to the surface but unable to penetrate his unbroken skin. 

Finally, Sinclair releases the pliers.

Tears fall as the pain rushes into his arm tenfold. Without the pressure of the pliers, the pain is shaper, tender in the most breath-hitching way. Dylan’s cries of pain grow indistinguishable from his gasps for breath, he slams over and over against his restraints with the urge to flee, the urge to hold his palm over the unbroken wound on his arm. 

The pool of blood beneath his skin is the size of an apple slice, speckled around the edges. 

Dylan flinches futilely away when Sinclair reaches for his arm again, but no amount of squirming can stop Sinclair from brushing his knuckle against the throbbing flesh in a bastardization of a lover’s caress.

“Soft skin made softer,” Sinclair mutters, eyes fixed on the blood blister. Pupils dilated. He’s enjoying this.

_He’s fucking enjoying this._

As if possessed by a sudden urge, Sinclair steadies Dylan’s arm with one hand while positioning the pliers again with his other—half an inch below the first blister. The plier’s jaws clamp down without prelude this time. 

Dylan screams wildly, still not recovered from the ache of pain from the first squeeze of the pliers. Nonsensical obscenities burst from him to echo uselessly off the walls.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He’s giving these people exactly what they want.

Every involuntary jerk of struggle, of fight or flight instinct, causes the pliers to slip just a little, pinch his skin just a little thinner, a little harder.

It’s excruciating. The pain. The inability to flee. 

“Such pretty biology,” Sinclair says, every ounce of his intonation full of wonder. Sincerity. 

Dylan doesn’t even have time to breathe as Sinclair releases the pliers only to move them another half an inch down, immediately crushing a new chunk of skin.

“Look at that,” Sinclair says softly, though his voice must be captured perfectly for the livestream by the small mic clipped to his shirt collar. Somehow, he’s audible above Dylan’s ear-splitting screams. “Like a frozen lake. So much trapped beneath the surface.” 

The first two wounds are ballooning now, swollen with the thick, dark blood trapped beneath skin worn threadbare by the pressure.

By the fourth clamp of the pliers, Dylan’s throat is so raw from screaming that he tastes blood.

When Sinclair finally pulls away, there are four blistered patches of skin, perfectly spaced down the outside of Dylan’s upper arm.

“Look at how pretty,” Sinclair coos, knuckles brushing down the length of the wounds, drawing a desperate hiss from Dylan. “Like jewels beneath your skin.”

Dylan’s breath is somewhere between a growl and a whine. 

Sinclair tilts Dylan’s chin up, forces eye contact. 

“Do you feel valuable now?” Sinclair asks, and then cups his own ear as if to listen to the reaction of the digital audience. “Do you hear that silence? They’re enthralled with you now.”

Dylan’s stomach churns at the nonsensical statement. Churns at the romanticization of the violence, which disturbs him more viscerally than the violence itself.

The whole process was so gentle. Measured. Like surgery. Brutal violence turned clinical.

Sinclair unsheathes the knife again from the holster on his hip. 

Dylan hates the way he can feel his own expression twist into one of rejection, of pleading. Instinctually, his face says: _please, no—whatever this is, no._

But he won’t do it. He won’t beg. Not verbally. He won’t give them the pleasure of hearing him broken.

Sinclair places the sharp, pin-point tip of the knife against the top center of the first blister. He waits for Dylan to meet his eyes before he presses the tip of the blade forward, puncturing swollen skin, the blade easily slicing through the damaged layers of flesh.

Sinclair’s previous words ring in his head: _soft skin made softer._

The blood that beads from the wound is dark and thick—old blood, soon flooded with new. Bright red, thin and leaking hotly down Dylan’s arm as Sinclair drags the knife vertically down the series of newly formed blisters.

Dylan writhes against the restraints, clenching his teeth futilely to prevent a high pitched groan from ripping from his throat. 

Lukewarm blood streams down his arm—not nearly enough to make this level of pain seem justified. It drips down to the concrete, forming a tiny, oil-like pool.

Dylan’s breath is coming in harsh pants now, vision darkening around the edges. Hyperventilation.

His sliced skin opens like the mouth of a coin purse, revealing thick layers of skin, bright yellow fat. Slick muscle beneath.

Sinclair smiles as he pulls the blade away a bit below the last blister. 

The knife wound makes a slightly curved slash through each blister. The edges of the wound are notably frailer over the blisters. Skin like tissue paper. 

Blood still spills from the cut, coiling down his arm. Not enough. Not enough blood for the amount of pain sizzling through his body right now, for the alarming sight of the gaping wound. It’s almost insulting, the slow, warm drip.

Only the sharpest part of Sinclair’s knife is leaking red. An abysmal amount of blood drips slowly down the hilt in rivlets.

The torture stops. Sinclair wipes the blade with a handkerchief. Sheathes it again on his belt.

Dylan tries to slow his breathing, consume the air in measured doses. Tries not to look at the way the flesh on his arm pops open like a hungry mouth. The pain in his arm is begging him to cradle the wounds with his hands, to curl in on himself. He tries, but he can’t budge in the restraints. Instead he doubles over as much as he can, hair hanging in front of his face like blinders on a police horse. He stares at his lap, unable to even blink.

His vision is unfocused, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t stop it from going fuzzy. When he finally looks up again, the studio lights blur. The face of the cameraman blurs. Sinclair’s face turns to a smudge of pale skin and white, smiling teeth.

A buzzer sounds.

_No,_ Dylan thinks, and then more frantic, yanking on his restraints, _no, no no!_

“You didn’t think your performance was over, did you? No, we have quite a large organization. A lot of expendable income.” Sinclair chuckles. “You’re far from repaying the effort it took to pluck you out of your sad excuse for a life.”

The insult is such an easy jab that Dylan doesn’t even feel it sting. 

Yeah, everyone thinks a life like his is worthless. He knows this, he’s dealt with the knowledge of this already. He’s had time to process it, had time to be sure as hell that anyone who thinks that way is wrong. He has value. Old man Chuck has value. Tyler. All of the others.

“You think I don’t know what you think of me already?” Dylan snarls. Somehow, he manages to raise his voice without letting it crack. “You’ll have to do better than weak insults like that.”

A buzzer sounds again. Dylan had almost forgotten. The bidding.

He looks up, tries to focus on the number on the monitor and not the screens bearing a closeup of his still-weeping wound, raw and exposed to air. Not the monitor showcasing his sour expression. 

The bid is five digits this time.

The command simply reads: shirt.

Sinchair unsheathes the knife again. 

“Here, little rabbit,” he says as he fists a hand in the bottom of Dylan’s shirt, pulling it away from his skin. He stabs the knife through the fabric carelessly, the tip just barely stopping before it punctures Dylan’s stomach. He rips the knife upwards in a quick, tearing motion. The fiber splits as the skin on his arm had split. Beneath, Dylan’s bare, heaving chest is revealed. Bending close to his ear, Sinclair whispers, “The audience wants to see your frightened rabbit breath.”

Dylan hates how accurate that is, how quick his lungs fill and spill, like a full cup left under a running faucet, never emptying fully no matter how much water runs down the glass. Perpetually over capacity.

Sinclair continues to cut away the shirt until the fabric is in tatters, shredded and ripped away from his body, discarded on the stage floor like trash.

That particular shirt has gotten Dylan through several summers, the fabric sun-bleached and soft. It’s his favorite possession. And now it’s destroyed. Like nothing.

Like he’s going to be destroyed.

This sets Dylan’s blood boiling so feverishly it might as well be scorching steam in his veins. 

“What the fuck?” he yells, quivering snarl and bared teeth directed straight at the camera lens, not Sinclair. What the fuck is this? Some sort of fetish club? These guys are into, what? Violent fucking BDSM? Knife play? The thoughts race through his head, but all that comes out is another, “Holy shit, _what the fuck?_”

Dylan may be a virgin, but he grew up in the twenty-first century. There’s no such thing as innocence when surrounded by sexualized media. He knows people are into this kinda shit—but, why the fuck is it necessary to make it real? Why subject an unwilling victim to it, when there are plenty of consenting adults out there with the same fetishes willing to cooperate consensually?

“I’m afraid your question is very vague,” Sinclair says, unamused.

Bids roll in again on the monitor above.

“This is so fucking stupid,” Dylan manages through heavy breath. “If you’re into BDSM, why can’t you find someone who wants to participate!? Five fucking figures to have my shirt torn off? This is fucking ridiculous!”

That earns a snort from Sinclair. A surge of activity in the chat.

There’s no reply, though, no argument from Sinclair. As if Dylan’s question is so ignorant and silly it doesn’t even warrant an answer.

When the buzzer signals the end of bidding, of course Dylan looks up. Of course he can’t help but peer into what his future holds. Like a crystal ball that only reveals pain and despair.

The winning bid is six figures. Six fucking figures. 

The bid reads: _Thighs. Welts._

Dylan grimaces, his lip twitching in disgust. He hates that these people know how to effectively communicate the acts they want Sinclair to subject him to. It takes just two words and Sinclair knows exactly what the audience wants.

Thighs. Welts.

As if they’ve been through this very scenario dozens of times before on dozens of victims. They probably have. Probably hundreds. Probably more.

Sinclair makes sure to angle his body so the camera can get a view of his hands on Dylan’s fly, popping open the button on his jeans and tugging on either side of the enclosure so hard the zipper breaks.

_Jesus Christ!_

Dylan seethes, this time his instinctual struggling only serves to aid Sinclair in tugging his pants down until they’re bunched around his ankles. Thankfully his boxer briefs are left securely around his waist. Dylan can feel his own expression darken at that. He supposes the underwear coming off costs extra. Of course it does. 

Before Dylan knows it, the cameraman is withdrawing back to his camera, having already handed Sinclair a flog. The black leather strips of fringe on the end of the rod look soft now, but Dylan knows they’ll turn sharp against his skin with enough force.

Inside the bundle of leather strips is something else—something small and glinting. Barbed. Like flexible razor wire. Like something curled at the top of a high fence to keep people like him out.

Dylan only has a few seconds to brace himself before Sinclair raises the flog high and brings it down over both of Dylan’s thighs.

Dylan does his best to snap his thighs closed, to shield his genitals from the blow. The burst of pain is excruciating. It instantly leaves red marks and tiny pin-prick dots of blood, like mosquito bites. 

The flog comes down again, this time to reveal white, swollen lines of skin rising above irritated red. Welts. Just like the audience wanted.

The flog comes down again.


End file.
